CounterCurrent: Week of 11/11/24
Most of us use social media to keep up with friends, share our achievements, and promote our business adventures. As it turns out, this applies to more than just us “normies.” America’s pro-Hamas supporters on campus use social media in much of the same way. Specifically, Students for Justice in Palestine, a pro-Palestinian student and faculty activist organization, use Instagram to promote their worldviews and events to a broad audience thirsting for ever more content based on anti-colonialism, anti-Americanism, and liberation ideology.
This line of thinking got our fellow Mason Goad wondering, could this be a way to take a bird’s eye view of the links between the various chapters of Students for Justice for Palestine (SJP) and their affiliated supporters? Sure enough, it is.
Featured in this CounterCurrent is Mason’s new report, Instagram the Intifada: Mapping the Social Network of Students for Justice in Palestine. The report samples 100 colleges and universities across the United States and five geographic regions to provide the best possible picture of SJP’s network.
Instagram the Intifada finds, to no one’s surprise, that the Columbia University SJP is one of the most influential chapters, although Meta removed the account while we were compiling this data. Just yesterday, Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) posted a graphic calling for supporters to reject Veterans Day and celebrate “Martyrs Day.” Other popular chapters include Harvard and Boston University.
The report also lists other organizations, individuals, and journalists SJP “holds in high regard.” These include the famously kosher Jewish Voice for Peace, Hamas mouthpiece Al-Jazeera, and pro-Palestinian activist Linda Sarsour.
The rhetoric and outright support of terrorism by SJP, its chapters, and its affiliates are an alarming occurrence on American campuses. Their actions have disrupted the mission of colleges and universities and further politicized campus life. We hope this report opens the door for other researchers to continue studying the affiliations of SJP chapters and uncover their financial backers. As explained best by Mason:
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.
Until next week.
CounterCurrent is the National Association of Scholars’ weekly newsletter, written by the NAS Staff. To subscribe, update your email preferences here.
Template photo by SdecoretMockup on Adobe Stock, report cover by B&S
