West Virginia U Cracks Down On Jewish Students For Muslims, Advocate Says

Students grumbling about cafeteria food and biased professors are staples of the college experience. Add a geopolitical flash point to the mix and make students the targets of grumbling, however, and colleges may find themselves in court.

West Virginia University punished Jewish student Eliyahu Itkowitz after a cafeteria worker complained he was handing out a pro-Israel book, called campus police to remove Itkowitz from the dining hall and belatedly claimed he called her a “terrorist” after claiming he just called her “anti-Jewish,” according to a civil liberties group assisting Itkowitz.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression demanded WVU “lift the no-contact order” against Itkowitz and end its “policy of investigating wholly protected expression,” which has “allowed students and staff to weaponize the complaint process to silence their ideological opponents,” FIRE program counsel Jessie Appleby told school President Gordon Gee on Monday.

Appleby pointed to WVU’s prior 10-month investigation of another student for “counter-protesting at pro-Palestinian demonstrations,” which only ended when the student graduated. The Muslim Students Association helped instigate both probes, she said.

Rupa Marya sued the University of California for suspending and firing the UC San Francisco part-time medical professor in part because she shared her students’ fears for their safety last fall after learning about a purported classmate who had “just come from Israel” and “may have been directly involved in the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.”