UCLA administrators said last Wednesday that they would be suspending two Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) organizations after masked campus activists outside the home of UC Regent Jay Sures.
They vandalized his property and surrounded his wife in her car as well.
In a broad campus message, Chancellor Julio Frenk stated that the UCLA Office of Student Conduct implemented an interim suspension while internal judicial procedures over the groups Students for Justice in Palestine and Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine occurred. The conduct proceedings and suspensions are indefinite.
These groups will no longer be able to apply for student club funding, reserve space for campus meetings, or affiliate with UCLA.
“Without the basic feeling of safety, humans cannot learn, teach, work, and live — much less thrive and flourish. This is true no matter what group you are a member of — or which identities you hold. There is no place for violence in our Bruin community,” Frenk wrote in his letter.
BREAKING: UCLA has suspended Students for Justice in Palestine for protesting at Regent Jay Sures’s home.
— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) February 13, 2025
Statement from Chancellor Julio Frenk:
“A Stand Against Violence in our Community” pic.twitter.com/J9TfIp8sen
The SJP groups disputed the suspensions in statements posted to Instagram on Thursday, stating that “[W]e reject Frenk’s accusations that student protesters have committed violence against the UCLA community. Regardless of the official status of our organizations, we will never stop fighting for full divestment [from Israel].”
Numerous other UC campuses and others nationwide have banned or suspended SJP.
The organization is suspended until September 2026 from UC Santa Cruz, while it is suspended through November 2029 at UC Irvine. UC San Diego did not renew the university group status this fall after SJP was charged last spring with activities “incompatible with the orderly operation of campus.”
UC adopted “zero-tolerance” policies for code of conduct violations following the unrest in spring 2024. One policy bans masking while breaking the law.
Frenk said that the activists “harassed” Sures and used “threatening messages,” holding a banner saying, “Jonathan Sures, you will pay until you see your final day.” They also “vandalized the Sures home by applying red-colored handprints to the outer walls of the home and hung banners on the property’s hedges.”
Sures is an “outspoken supporter of Israel,” according to the LA Times, and had called actions of pro-Palestinian campus protestors “antisemitic” when both encampments and conflicts with police and administrators increased last year.
Sures believes that the activists chose his home because he’s Jewish, saying that “[T]his is not about me. I’m the target, but this is about protecting every member of our community from intimidation and hate,” Sures said. “The conceit that somehow you will intimidate me and the University of California will divest is silly and illogical. That’s never going to happen.”
UCLA’s decision to suspend Students for Justice in Palestine was announced by new Chancellor Julio Frenk, who started in the role this January. https://t.co/G9hLuY5aLO pic.twitter.com/7ZvmdJQHpF
— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) February 13, 2025
Join the conversation as a VIP Member