Students for Justice in Palestine's (SJP's) leadership, membership, and bed fellows have enjoyed hiding behind relative anonymity---masking their faces, organizational structure, and allied groups---as they've caused chaos on college campuses these last several months.
That ends today.
But first, some background...
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That ends today.
But first, some background...
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In June of 2022, Representatives Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) and Don Bacon (R-Neb.) were joined by 35 other colleagues in a bipartisan request to Attorney General Merrick Garland, Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas of the Department of Homeland Security, and Director Christopher Wray of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Their request was a call for federal law enforcement to investigate the malicious creation and use of “The Mapping Project.”
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bacon.house.gov/news/documents…
Their request was a call for federal law enforcement to investigate the malicious creation and use of “The Mapping Project.”
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bacon.house.gov/news/documents…
The map provides information about Jewish businesses and people in and around the state of Massachusetts, and was created by anonymous activists who claim that their “interactive map illustrates some ways in which institutional support for the colonization of Palestine is structurally tied to policing and systemic white supremacy here where we live, and to US imperialist projects in other countries.”
The concerns of those members of Congress are certainly understandable, especially since today, less than two years later, violent anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism have swept the nation, particularly on college campuses, led by a new project: Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).
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The concerns of those members of Congress are certainly understandable, especially since today, less than two years later, violent anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism have swept the nation, particularly on college campuses, led by a new project: Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).
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Having visited SJP's camp at George Washington University earlier this year, I am a first-hand witness to the fact that SJP has defaced monuments, occupied buildings, set up camps, clashed with police, called for an “Intifada” (i.e., armed rebellion), and continues to do so. SJP also remains openly supportive of Hamas, a terrorist group.
Questions about SJP’s organization, leadership, affiliations, and funding abound but these questions have largely gone unanswered---until today.
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Questions about SJP’s organization, leadership, affiliations, and funding abound but these questions have largely gone unanswered---until today.
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We sought to answer the first three of those questions—in regard to organization structure, leadership, and affiliations—by mapping out the Students for Justice in Palestine’s social network on Instagram.
Unlike Students for Justice in Palestine and the creators of the aforementioned Mapping Project, however, we are not hiding behind anonymity.
We are not calling for violence, the destruction of property, or the destruction of the United States and her government.
Our efforts are intended to assist law enforcement and other investigative entities / interested parties (such as researchers like ourselves, or members of the public), who are rightfully concerned with SJP’s actions and rhetoric.
We simply want to understand the organization of SJP, to identify SJP’s true leadership, and to determine the groups that SJP is most closely associated with and influenced by.
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Unlike Students for Justice in Palestine and the creators of the aforementioned Mapping Project, however, we are not hiding behind anonymity.
We are not calling for violence, the destruction of property, or the destruction of the United States and her government.
Our efforts are intended to assist law enforcement and other investigative entities / interested parties (such as researchers like ourselves, or members of the public), who are rightfully concerned with SJP’s actions and rhetoric.
We simply want to understand the organization of SJP, to identify SJP’s true leadership, and to determine the groups that SJP is most closely associated with and influenced by.
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To accomplish this, we sampled 100 colleges and universities across the United States, as well as five geographic regions, and constructed a dataset of the “following” lists (as opposed to the “followers” lists) of 111 public accounts on Instagram that claim to be SJP chapters.
While many of these accounts may have been deleted by their owners or removed by Instagram’s moderators since then (mostly due to SJP's incessant calls for violence), this new dataset provides the public with novel insights into Students for Justice in Palestine’s social network.
The 100 universities are listed below.
The five geographic regions were:
Students for Justice in Palestine - Chicago Coalition
Students for Justice in Palestine - Colorado Coalition
Students for Justice in Palestine - DC, Maryland, and Virginia (DMV) Coalition
Students for Justice in Palestine - National Coalition
Students for Justice in Palestine - Southern California Coalition
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While many of these accounts may have been deleted by their owners or removed by Instagram’s moderators since then (mostly due to SJP's incessant calls for violence), this new dataset provides the public with novel insights into Students for Justice in Palestine’s social network.
The 100 universities are listed below.
The five geographic regions were:
Students for Justice in Palestine - Chicago Coalition
Students for Justice in Palestine - Colorado Coalition
Students for Justice in Palestine - DC, Maryland, and Virginia (DMV) Coalition
Students for Justice in Palestine - National Coalition
Students for Justice in Palestine - Southern California Coalition
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With these lists of SJP-followed accounts, we built an association matrix (sometimes referred to as a link-analysis matrix) by looking at the duplicates in the data set.
The more SJP chapters follow one account, the more we should be able to confidently conclude that entity’s importance and influence within Students for Justice in Palestine’s social network.
For our purposes here, if one account is followed by 20 or more distinct SJP chapters, the entity affiliated with that followed account is likely quite essential and influential to Students for Justice in Palestine’s network as a whole, and deserves further investigation.
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The more SJP chapters follow one account, the more we should be able to confidently conclude that entity’s importance and influence within Students for Justice in Palestine’s social network.
For our purposes here, if one account is followed by 20 or more distinct SJP chapters, the entity affiliated with that followed account is likely quite essential and influential to Students for Justice in Palestine’s network as a whole, and deserves further investigation.
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Sure enough, the account that appeared most often across all lists was @NationalSJP, the National Students for Justice in Palestine coalition.
The Columbia University SJP chapter placed third, with Harvard and Boston University chapters placing seventh and eighth, respectively.
Excluding the trends of SJP chapters following each other—a trend that appears to reveal the relative importance of individual SJP chapters in the eyes of SJP’s (inter-)national leadership and membership—the data also reveals several journalists and various organizations that SJP appears to hold in high regard, as each account was followed by at least 20 of the 111 SJP chapters.
By order of appearance, and thus presumed importance and influence to SJP leadership, they are:
(You'll notice that the aforementioned Mapping Project holds the 56th spot.)
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The Columbia University SJP chapter placed third, with Harvard and Boston University chapters placing seventh and eighth, respectively.
Excluding the trends of SJP chapters following each other—a trend that appears to reveal the relative importance of individual SJP chapters in the eyes of SJP’s (inter-)national leadership and membership—the data also reveals several journalists and various organizations that SJP appears to hold in high regard, as each account was followed by at least 20 of the 111 SJP chapters.
By order of appearance, and thus presumed importance and influence to SJP leadership, they are:
(You'll notice that the aforementioned Mapping Project holds the 56th spot.)
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But we're not finished, because there's a lot left to explore.
You see, in addition to determining which SJP chapters, other organizations, and individual persons are seemingly most important and influential to SJP leadership at the national level, SJP leadership of local chapters often followed their local leadership, as well as faculty and staff sympathetic to the SJP movement.
This is not to say that every local account followed by individual SJP Chapters is sympathetic to the SJP movement. (After all, it is not only possible, but likely, that more than a few people are followed by SJP for the purposes of terroristic intimidation.) This is only to say that, based on our sampling, such sympathy toward SJP appears most often the case.
So, there is still a lot left to explore at the edges of the network---local leaders, regional organizations, etc.----and the easiest way to do that is to allow you, concerned members of the public, to explore SJP's network on your own.
As such, and as always, we have made the data available, but that's not all...
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You see, in addition to determining which SJP chapters, other organizations, and individual persons are seemingly most important and influential to SJP leadership at the national level, SJP leadership of local chapters often followed their local leadership, as well as faculty and staff sympathetic to the SJP movement.
This is not to say that every local account followed by individual SJP Chapters is sympathetic to the SJP movement. (After all, it is not only possible, but likely, that more than a few people are followed by SJP for the purposes of terroristic intimidation.) This is only to say that, based on our sampling, such sympathy toward SJP appears most often the case.
So, there is still a lot left to explore at the edges of the network---local leaders, regional organizations, etc.----and the easiest way to do that is to allow you, concerned members of the public, to explore SJP's network on your own.
As such, and as always, we have made the data available, but that's not all...
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We have also made a massive, interactive network web that lays bare the social network of SJP. This web is available to play with online, or to download.
For those of you with the technical knowledge to do so, we have also released the graphing code used to make the network web if you'd like to play with that as well.
The image below displays just a small section of the full SJP network, this section focused on those entities affiliated with West Virginia University's SJP chapter.
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For those of you with the technical knowledge to do so, we have also released the graphing code used to make the network web if you'd like to play with that as well.
The image below displays just a small section of the full SJP network, this section focused on those entities affiliated with West Virginia University's SJP chapter.
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It has been just over a year since the October 7th attacks in Israel occurred, and Students for Justice in Palestine celebrated the anniversary of the slaughter.
The SJP Chapter at Swarthmore College posted a link on Instagram, with the caption: “Happy October 7th everyone! In honor of this glorious day and all our martyred revolutionaries, donate here.”
Brown University suspended its SJP chapter due to the “severity of alleged threatening, intimidating and harassing actions,” and many other universities have done the same.
A similar student group, Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CAUD), openly praised Hamas and called for additional violence, prompting Senator Joni Earnst (R-IA) and Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY) to ask the Federal Bureau of Investigation to investigate the CAUD’s activities and affiliations.
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campusreform.org/article/fbi-ur…
The SJP Chapter at Swarthmore College posted a link on Instagram, with the caption: “Happy October 7th everyone! In honor of this glorious day and all our martyred revolutionaries, donate here.”
Brown University suspended its SJP chapter due to the “severity of alleged threatening, intimidating and harassing actions,” and many other universities have done the same.
A similar student group, Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CAUD), openly praised Hamas and called for additional violence, prompting Senator Joni Earnst (R-IA) and Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY) to ask the Federal Bureau of Investigation to investigate the CAUD’s activities and affiliations.
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campusreform.org/article/fbi-ur…
The SJP camps may have been cleared out, and the intensity of their protests may have waned, but this organization’s presence on campuses and the threat it presents has gone nowhere.
There is still much left in the data to be explored, too much to do on our own.
With the creation and release of this original dataset, we hope to offer other researchers and law enforcement officials an extensive list of leads for further inquiry into the organization and leadership of Students for Justice in Palestine, its ties to other organizations, and persons of interest.
The full report is available on @NASorg 's website, at the link below. Note that the web page may take longer to load than usual.
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nas.org/reports/instag…
There is still much left in the data to be explored, too much to do on our own.
With the creation and release of this original dataset, we hope to offer other researchers and law enforcement officials an extensive list of leads for further inquiry into the organization and leadership of Students for Justice in Palestine, its ties to other organizations, and persons of interest.
The full report is available on @NASorg 's website, at the link below. Note that the web page may take longer to load than usual.
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nas.org/reports/instag…
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