Four Penn students suspended for pro-Palestinian demonstration

Four students involved in pro-Palestinian protests at the University of Pennsylvania have been suspended for their actions, a student group said.

Two students were suspended for one semester, two for a full year. Two graduate students and two undergraduate students received the disciplinary action, which has not yet taken effect and against which the students can still appeal.

The sanctions This followed a 16-day camp at the university, which ended in May with the police breaking up the camp and 33 arrests, including nine arrests of students.

The suspensions were imposed by the University of Pennsylvania’s disciplinary body, the Center for Community Standards and Accountability.

“Penn continues to review cases of student conduct related to campus demonstrations this spring,” a university spokesperson said Tuesday. “The university provides all students with due process in accordance with our policies and recommends appropriate sanctions on a case-by-case basis.”

The students’ suspensions come “after months of relentless repression at universities and targeted discipline of pro-Palestinian students,” the pro-Palestinian student group Freedom School for Palestine said in a statement. “These students have been deprived of their access to education, income, student jobs and health insurance by this suspension.”

Hilah Kohen, a Penn student studying comparative literature and literary theory, was suspended for a year for participating in pro-Palestinian activities, they said, condemning Penn’s “dictatorial measures.”

Kohen, a Falk Fellow in Jewish Studies at the university, said the student movement’s “solidarity with Palestine is only one part of a global whole. … Every ethical thinker must keep in mind the Palestinian resistance to genocide.”

Kohen was arrested when the camp was dismantled and was also banned from campus indefinitely by another university authority. That ban is still in effect, it is said.

I am a man, a young design student, whose last name is being withheld out of fear for his safety, was suspended for a semester. He was also arrested when police broke up the camp, but criminal charges against him and Kohen were later dropped. The reasons the university gave for his suspension were confusing, he said – they “specifically had to do with building regulations and a threat to student safety, even though the charges against me were completely dropped and there is no criminal case. I have no criminal record whatsoever.”

There have been protests at Pennsylvania University in the past, Iman said, but he believes the university is “taking targeted action against pro-Palestinian activism on our campus.”

The suspension “changes a lot of things for me,” Iman said. He lives off campus, so he still has housing, but he will lose the stipend the university paid him for housing.

Iman also had a work-study job while at Penn. “I’m definitely not going to be hired at one of my jobs next semester. I can’t even get on campus to get any services. I’m losing access to Penn’s health insurance. I’m losing a lot of opportunities to look for jobs.”

The group said the university wanted to “suppress speech and actions that threaten Penn’s interests.”

Last month, Penn released new guidelines for student protests that explicitly banned tent camps, a measure the student group called a “crackdown on free speech” that “threatens to expand beyond this specific issue and undermine the norms of university life.”

The student group called on Penn officials to stop the disciplinary proceedings.

The controversy began at the University of Pennsylvania in September, when the campus hosted the Palestine Writes literary festival, which critics said featured speakers with a history of anti-Semitic remarks. Tensions escalated after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent military response. Donors criticized the university for not doing enough to protect Jewish students, and then-university president Liz Magill resigned in December after her testimony before Congress about the university’s handling of anti-Semitic incidents sparked a heated reaction.

Pro-Palestinian students and teachers accused the university of not doing enough to protect their rights, and the camp was set up in late April.

The camp members called on the university to disclose its financial holdings, divest from all investments in the war and grant amnesty to pro-Palestinian students who faced disciplinary action for previous protests.