By Aiden Pink, Forward—
A New York state court has ordered Fordham University to recognize a chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, ending a two-year legal saga.
The dean’s office at Fordham, a Jesuit Catholic school with campuses in the Bronx, Manhattan and Westchester County, had banned SJP in 2017 after the student government voted to approve it. “The narrowness of Students for Justice in Palestine’s political focus makes it more akin to a lobbying group than a student club,” the university said in a statement then.
But Judge Nancy Bannon found that Fordham had infringed on SJP members’ rights by following its own regulations for recognizing student clubs.
“Fordham did not abide by its own published rules governing the approval and recognition of student clubs, in as much as it seemingly imposed an additional tier of review, by a dean, of an approval already rendered by the USG,” Bannon wrote in her opinion, according to the Fordham Ram, the school’s student newspaper.
Lead plaintiff and Fordham graduate Ahmad Awad said that the ban didn’t stop him from engaging in advocacy. “I continued to advocate for justice in Palestine, and now because of Justice Bannon’s order, no Fordham student will be restricted or prohibited from advocating for justice in Palestine,” he said in a statement.
A university spokesperson told the Ram that they were reviewing the ruling. Continue Reading….
