[Want even more content from FPM? Sign up for FPM+ to unlock exclusive series, virtual town-halls with our authors, and more—now for just $3.99/month. Click here to sign up.]
Editor’s note: Over the past several decades, few places in America have become more hostile to free speech than our universities. Yet in the wake of rising anti-Semitism and the pro-Hamas campus rallies and occupations that were sparked by the terror group’s October 7 massacre, university administrators seem to have had a sudden change of heart.
The Freedom Center is exposing the most egregious perpetrators of these double standards in free expression as the Top Ten Ivory Tower Hypocrites. These are universities whose leaders have permitted woke leftist activists to run roughshod over campus rules and violate codes of conduct with impunity, while failing to extend even basic free speech protections to students and faculty with opposing views. Georgetown University is #4 on our list.
#4: Georgetown University
In the months after Hamas’s barbaric October 7 massacre of innocent Israeli Jews, Georgetown University, located in our nation’s capital, played host to many vitriolic, anti-Semitic events and demonstrations. Led by both students and faculty, these events featured unmistakable calls for the genocide of the Jews and the continuation of terrorist violence against Israel.
A mere three days after Hamas’s mass slaughter, kidnapping, rape and torture of Israeli civilians, Georgetown’s chapter of the Hamas-funded campus organization, Students for Justice in Palestine, released a statement that demonized Israel and condoned Hamas’s actions. “Peace cannot exist without justice, and justice starts with ending the occupation of Palestine…,” SJP declared. “We cannot live in peace with an apartheid, zionist regime an ethno-religious – supremacist settler-colonial political system in power… [SJP] affirms that the anticolonial struggle for justice is the only way that liberation and peace can become a tangible reality.”
Georgetown Law SJP joined the Georgetown chapter of the National Lawyers Guild in releasing a statement which lambasted GU President John DeGioia for publicly condemning Hamas’s October 7 massacre. The statement justified Hamas’s atrocious acts of terrorism, stating that, “As law students, we know that resistance under occupation is a legal right and is predicated on the violence of occupation. Resistance, armed struggle, and wars of national liberation are endorsed by international humanitarian law.”
When Jewish Life and the Georgetown Israel Alliance organized an event featuring IDF soldiers on campus, SJP together with an array of pro-Hamas organization mobilized to disrupt the event and then bragged about their success at impeding pro-Israel speech on campus: “SJP + JVP + the Divest Coalition mobilized HUNDREDS of students to come together and send the university our message: we will NEVER accept genocidal war criminals on this campus… These IOF soldiers did not enjoy a SECOND of peace from the moment they stepped foot on our campus… our chants were so loud that those inside could not even hear the soldiers speak… Our demands remain the same. Ceasefire. Divest. Free Palestine.”
At a September 2024 rally held by the Hamas-affiliated campus organization Students for Justice in Palestine, demonstrators held signs openly promoting terrorism including one that read “Jews for Intifada.” The sign depicted inverted red triangles, a symbol of Hamas’ targets for elimination. A separate “walkout” for Palestine the previous April featured chants of “There is only one solution; Intifada, revolution.”
Through months and months of these pro-Hamas outpourings, the Georgetown University administration did virtually nothing to impede the calls for a Jewish genocide that resounded across the campus. “We respect the rights of members of our community to express their personal views and are committed to maintaining the values of academic freedom and serving as a forum for the free exchange of ideas, even when those ideas may be controversial and objectionable to some,” a Georgetown spokesperson told the media recently, responding to concerns that the Trump administration might seek to penalize the university for allowing anti-Semitism to continue unchecked.
This unflinching dedication to free speech is clearly a very recent development for the university which has garnered national headlines for persecuting students and faculty who dare to speak out of turn. Consider the case of law professor Ilya Shapiro, who tweeted his opposition to Biden’s pledge to select an African-American woman to serve as the next justice on the Supreme Court. Shapiro believed that Sri Srinivasan would be Biden’s “best pick” for the Court but noted that “alas [Srinivasan] doesn’t fit into latest intersectionality hierarchy so we’ll get [a] lesser black woman.”
Instead of defending Shapiro’s academic freedom, Georgetown Law Dean William Treanor called Shapiro’s tweet “appalling” and “at odds with everything we stand for at Georgetown Law” and placed the new hire on administrative leave before he was able to teach a single class. The university initiated a four-month investigation to determine whether Shapiro had violated Georgetown’s diversity and inclusion policies, during which time the professor was entirely sidelined at his new job,
Georgetown reluctantly reinstated Shapiro after the end of the school year and acknowledged that he did not violate Georgetown’s absurdly restrictive free speech policies—not because his comments about Biden’s Supreme Court nominee constituted legitimate political discourse, but only because he was not yet an official employee of Georgetown at the time of his tweets. The university used the exoneration as an excuse to scold Shapiro for “your comments” which “had a significant negative impact on the Georgetown Law community, including current and prospective students, alumni, staff, and faculty” and “could have the effect of limiting Black women students’ access to courses taught by [you] and undermine Georgetown Law’s commitment to maintain inclusive learning and working environments.”
Nor was Shapiro’s persecution the only instance of Georgetown’s brutal repression of free expression. In March of 2021, Georgetown Law School fired one professor and placed a second on administrative leave for comments expressing “angst” that African-American students tend to earn grades near the bottom of the grading scale. Despite the likely validity of this statement of fact, Georgetown summarily fired the professor for wrongthink.
Georgetown’s students have also suffered persecution for exercising their First Amendment rights. In September 2019, the Georgetown University College Republicans held an event intended to combat climate alarmism and prove that the global situation is not so dire as many on the left have claimed. A mob of student protestors crashed the event and ignored over 40 requests from the police to leave, resulting in the evacuation of the room and the temporary suspension of the event.
Joking about the incident in a conservative group chat, student Jack Wagner suggested “Can we call ICE on [the protestors].” Another student responded in kind, jesting “nah, it’s melting … climate change bro.”
This innocent exchange became the fodder for a campus mob to demand that Wagner be punished for his private joke. The campus group, Hoyas for Immigrant Rights, put out a statement claiming that Wagner’s “words are embedded in racism and white supremacy” and “ultimately created an unsafe environment for students at Georgetown University,” and asserting that Georgetown “must hold Jack Wagner accountable for his words.” Hundreds of students, dozens of faculty members, and 20 campus organizations signed on to this statement asking the university to take disciplinary action against a student for a private and inoffensive joke.
Georgetown University refused to act against students and faculty who openly promoted terrorism against the Jews while persecuting campus conservatives for expressing their constitutionally protected speech. The university has undoubtedly earned its spot on the list of Ivory Tower Hypocrites.
Previously in this series…
#7: University of Nevada-Las Vegas
