D.A. should investigate SDSU incident

By Donald H. Harrison

Donald H. Harrison
Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO – When SDSU President Elliot Hirshman was held captive Wednesday in a car for approximately two hours by angry students, that potentially was a matter of false imprisonment and violation of his civil rights that demand investigation by state and federal prosecutors.  At the same time, flyers naming individual SDSU students and professors as having links to terrorism should similarly be investigated potentially as a case of incitement to riot.  The flyer is also possible grounds for a civil libel action that can be brought against the David Horowitz Freedom Center by the individuals so named.

For background on this case, please see the story that appeared in Friday’s San Diego Union-Tribune: http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2016/apr/27/sdsu-protests-anti-muslim-fliers/

Congratulations are due to SDSU’s Hirshman for keeping a cool head despite the unwise actions of the students who surrounded his campus police escort car and refused to leave until he came out into the crowd to talk to them.  One can imagine other university presidents, feeling their physical safety threatened, might have asked the campus police officer to radio for help, bringing more police power onto the campus and turning a tense situation even uglier.

Eventually, Hirshman exited the car and spoke to the students, including at least one who had been named in the flyer as a supporter of terrorism.  The student is active in the SDSU chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), the group that has been pressing for boycott, sanctions and divestment (BDS) against Israel on numerous campuses across the country.

Hirshman previously had co-signed a response to the flyers that the students thought too weak.  He decried the linking of individual students to terrorism as inimical to the free academic discussion that SDSU seeks to foster.  That did not go far enough because it failed to condemn the flyers for, in essence, making a target of the listed students and professors.

After he got out of the car and faced the students, Hirshman said he was sorry if he had inadvertently offended them.  The students accepted this as an apology and subsequently dispersed.

So, what could have turned into an incident in which people were hurt or arrested was averted, but that neither excuses the wrongful actions of the students nor the provocations of Horowitz’s Freedom Center.

Horowitz is expected on campus next Thursday and it is clear that, if the SDSU College Republicans don’t rescind their invitation, security will be necessary to avoid another blow up.

Numerous states have adopted legislation denying funding to institutions that participate in boycotts against Israel.  A similar bill with bipartisan support is moving through the California Legislature.  This legislation is worthy of support from the Jewish community.  BDS is not intended to foster the Israel-Palestinian peace process; it is meant to delegitimize Israel.  While we can disagree vehemently with people who support BDS, t hat is a far cry from falsely branding them as aligned with terrorists.

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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World.  He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com .  Comments intended for publication in the space below must be accompanied by the letter writer’s first and last name and by his/ her city and state of residence (city and country for those outside the U.S.)

1 thought on “D.A. should investigate SDSU incident”

  1. Several points are worth mentioning here.

    1. The students named are members of officially registered students groups. That’s a matter of public knowledge. If they wanted their membership to remain confidential, they should either not have joined or asked that their membership remain confidential. You can’t fault Horowitz for making public what is already public.
    2. The students’ behavior was nothing short of a hostage taking incident. They held Hirshman until he yielded. They won. The lesson: violence and intimidation works. There will be more of it as a result.
    3. Horowitz was invited by the Young Republicans, another student group with exactly the same status as the Students for Justice in Palestine and Muslim Student Association, and exactly the same rights to invite whom they choose, but there is going to be a riot, so the YR should rescind? Sure. Let’s accept the path of least resistance and accept more intimidation and threat of violence to shut off voices they don’t like, and consdier it a normal fact of life there.

    Moral of the story: Hirshman made the wrong choice by yielding to the illegal and unacceptable threats of physical violence implied in the students’ holding him hostage. He should have called the police and the culprits should have been arrested (they still should). And he should stand in support of Horowitz’s visit as a matter of principle. SDSU is not the private property of anti-Israel students who dictate what they want or else.
    –J.J. Surbeck, San Diego

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