CASE UPDATE: The Lawfare Project and Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer working to enforce SFSU agreement

Dear friends,

I write to you with an update on the situation at San Francisco State University (SFSU). The Lawfare Project and Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP are partnering to ensure that the University lives up to the terms of its settlement agreement. As you may be aware, in 2017, The Lawfare Project filed a lawsuit on behalf of Jewish students who faced anti-Semitic discrimination at SFSU. The students involved brought attention to the exclusion of the campus's Hillel organization from a school-sponsored fair. Ultimately, we were able to reach a settlement agreement whereby the University agreed to acknowledge Zionism as an important part of Jewish identity and made key commitments to protect Jewish students on campus.

SFSU has experienced numerous past instances of anti-Semitic discrimination. In 2016, students aggressively disrupted a campus event featuring the then-mayor of Jerusalem, making it impossible for the event to continue. When Jewish students called on campus police to act and ensure the event could proceed, the police stood silently by and allowed the event to be shut down. This was in flagrant violation of the university’s legal responsibility to the Jewish students. More recently, in September of 2020, SFSU invited an unrepentant airplane hijacker and active member of a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization to educate students via a Zoom webinar.

Your support makes our intervention possible. Thank you for fighting alongside The Lawfare Project in an effort to ensure the rights of Jewish students are protected on campus.

Sincerely,

Brooke Goldstein
Executive Director, The Lawfare Project