It finally happened: SFSU has pulled the plug on its rabidly anti-Semitic student organization, the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS). According to Saturday's L.A. Times (link courtesy of Armed Liberal) SFSU announced Friday that it was putting GUPS on probation and cutting off its funding for one year because of the way GUPS members behaved at a pro-Israel peace rally held on the campus last May 7: "The university said that it disciplined the General Union of Palestine Students because its members interfered with the pro-Israel rally," the Times reports. "After reviewing videotapes and interviewing witnesses about the incident, campus authorities concluded that the counterdemonstrators had violated campus regulations by hurling racial and ethnic epithets, using bullhorns and drums and refusing to remain in their designated area."

This is great news, and in many ways it is the result of the extended, concerted efforts of a number of professors, parents, students, citizens, and outraged bloggers who helped to expose GUPS' behavior for what it was, and who insisted, loudly, lengthily, and, much to President Corrigan's eternal dismay, publicly, that the SFSU administration stop equivocating and act. Truly a victory--one small step for campus justice, one giant step for administrative accountability.

But there is a little problem with the way SFSU proceeded last week. I refer to SFSU's decision to pull GUPS' web site.

Last week, SFSU convened a committee to evaluate the web site of the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS). The site, hosted on the SFSU server, featured rampant anti-Semitism, including an animated gif of a figure throwing a rock at a Star of David (currently viewable at GlennFrazier.com), a link to the Holy Land Foundation (a front for the terrorist organization HAMAS), and a link to ummah.net (the Muslim directory, which in turn contains a section on "the Holocaust that never was"). It was the last straw for parents, students, and professors who have been continually outraged in recent months by the lawless, hateful, and threatening behavior of members of the student organization. And it seems to have been the last straw, too, for a university administration that has taken a great deal of heat lately for its failure to address the ongoing outrageousness--and sometime illegality--of GUPS. After looking at the GUPS site, the committee pulled it, citing various violations of university policy and California law.

The Times notes in passing that before deciding to sanction GUPS, "school authorities also took down the group's Web site earlier this week because it showed an animated image throwing a rock against the Star of David and because the site carried a link to a separate Web site that made claims of 'Jewish ritual murder.'" A more detailed article in the Jewish Bulletin reports that

"The 14-member committee found the site violated SFSU Web policy in disseminating 'obscene, harassing, threatening, or unwelcome communications,' and contradicted sections of the student code of conduct in directing 'abusive behavior toward members of the campus community.' The committee also found the site to be in violation of sections of Title V of the state administrative code regarding disruption of the educational process and misuse of campus property. The Web Committee recommended SFSU's dean of students and office of programs and leadership development look into possibly punishing the Palestinian student organization."

Later in the week, GUPS was indeed punished in the manner outlined above.

So what's wrong with this picture? What's wrong with this picture is that the rationale for removing the web site--which we should note is different from the rationale that was later given for putting GUPS on probation--crumbles into nothing when looked at closely. GUPS members and their supporters will react to the summary removal of the web site by crying censorship, and they will have a point. The reasons given for removing the web site do not hold up against either university policy or the law (as I understand it--I'm no lawyer, just a dedicated student of how rights work on campus).

Let's start with university policy. According to the committee, the GUPS site violated SFSU Web policy in disseminating 'obscene, harassing, threatening, or unwelcome communications.' They've got GUPS dead to rights here, right? Wrong. Read it again. It's totally nonsensical. A web site is not a communication, but a publication. It sits quietly--if offensively--at its little URL, and only bothers you if you voluntarily go to it to be bothered. So what's going on? Sloppiness on the part of the people who wrote this policy. The wording is copied wholesale from SFSU's Computing Ethics and Security page, and it refers to improper use of an email account ; i.e., spamming or stalking. Needless to say, a website is not spam, and cannot stalk. No matter what its content, a website cannot in itself be considered an 'obscene, harassing, threatening, or unwelcome communication.'

Is there a policy governing web content at SFSU? Not at all, beyond the injunction to obey the law, and rightly so (more on this below). What there is, however, is a perfectly proper disclaimer: The university is quite clear that student organization web pages are classified as personal web pages, not official university pages (the way a departmental home page would be, for example). And it is careful, too, to disclaim the content on personal web pages, stating up front on the Student Programs page that "official recognition of a student organization does not by itself constitute any type of endorsement by the University of the organization's purpose, and it does not constitute any assumption of responsibility, liability, or sponsorship (fiscal or otherwise) by the University for the organization's activities."

What about the alleged violation of the Student Code of Conduct, that the GUPS web site constitutes "abusive behavior toward members of the campus community"? Is a web site a form of "behavior"? According to SFSU's code of conduct, it is indeed. The code clearly specifies that "The term 'behavior' includes conduct and expression." A web site is a form of expression. So SFSU has got GUPS dead to rights on this one, right? Wrong. SFSU is a state school, and is thus bound to uphold the First Amendment. This means that any restrictions the school places on expression have to be content-neutral, centered on time and place (you can't disrupt a class to demonstrate, for example, and you can't shout in my face--not even if what you are shouting is really nice).

SFSU's policy conflating speech with acts, and attempting thereby to limit expression to that which is not considered "abusive" (large, subjective category, that), is most likely unconstitutional, and would not hold up in court. Speech codes instituted by public universities never do. (For many examples, see the case archive at The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.)

A web site does not--cannot--constitute abusive behavior or expression. Yes, the GUPS site pummels the sensibilities of anyone who abhors anti-Semitism, terrorism, and vicious historical revisionism such as Holocaust denial. But wounding sensibilities is not an actionable offense.

SFSU does have a hate speech policy, which reads like this: "Hate speech is a generic term that has come to embrace the use of speech attacks on race, ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation while the First Amendment does not permit the government to impose special prohibitions on those speakers who express views on disfavored subjects. Speech or actions directed at inciting or producing imminent lawless action and speech likely to incite or produce such actions will be prohibited. Fighting words, which are likely to incite an immediate breach of the peace, will be prohibited. Communications, which create an imminent danger of uncontrolled violence, are prohibited."

This policy is grammatically disastrous, but the sense is clear enough on a couple reads. Basically, it acknowledges that the First Amendment protects hate speech. And then it stipulates those types of speech that are not covered by the First Amendment: fighting words and communications that "create an imminent danger of uncontrolled violence;" i.e. terroristic threats. We've already covered how a web site cannot be considered a communication. What about fighting words? Surely the GUPS site, with its image of rocks destroying the Star of David and its link to Hamas, constituted fighting words? No. As the AAUP (academe's watchdog organization for academic freedom) notes in its statement on Academic Freedom and Electronic Communication", "The doctrine of 'fighting words,' which is the basis for certain campus speech codes (as at the University of California) simply has no counterpart in digital expression; the imminent threat of physical response that may warrant silencing a provocative speaker does not have an obvious analogue in the virtual world." The AAUP is also very clear that academic freedom extends to cyberspace: words posted on the web are every bit as "real" and thus protected as words printed in a publication.

Hmmm. This web site is starting to look pretty censored.

What about the last rationale for pulling GUPS' site, the claim that it was in "violation of sections of Title V of the state administrative code regarding disruption of the educational process and misuse of campus property"? First off, the text of Title V is, conveniently, the same as the text of SFSU's student code of conduct. The relevant sections run as follows:

"Article 2, Title 5, California Code of Regulations 41301. Expulsion, Suspension, and Probation of Students. Following procedures consonant with due process established pursuant to Section 41304, any student of a campus may be expelled, suspended, placed on probation or given a lesser sanction for one or more of the following causes which must be campus related: .... d. Obstruction or disruption, on- or off-campus property, of the campus educational process, administrative process, or other campus function. ... g. Unauthorized entry into, unauthorized use of, or misuse of campus property."

Let's just say I have my doubts whether these policies have been reasonably applied in the case of the GUPS website. GUPS students were certainly guilty of (d) at the May 7 rally. But I don't see how the website itself obstructs or disrupts the educational process, for all the reasons outlined above. Nor do I see how a recognized student group using designated university web space to express its views (albeit controversial and hateful ones) constitutes a misuse of campus property, again, for all the reasons outlined above.

What we have here is not a case of a university administration finding its spine and acting swiftly and fairly to repair a wrong, but a university administration that is continuing its hallowed tradition of responding inappropriately to the provocative, menacing, and truly egregious behavior GUPS members have engaged in over the past year. As much as it may appall those of us who disagree with them, the students who belong to GUPS do have the right to express their beliefs before the eyes--and the judgement--of the world.

So here is where things stand at SFSU: in the past week, GUPS has been wrongfully censored and rightly sanctioned. Being on probation means that GUPS remains intact as a student group. (Here is the definition of probation, according to SFSU's Office of Student Programs: "A status imposed for a specific time period. Organizations on probation may continue with all or some of the rights and privileges of organizations for a specified period of time. Any violations within the time period will result in the immediate loss of all organizational privileges. The organization will be closely monitored by the Student Programs Office for the probation period.") So GUPS has gotten a little slap on the wrist: no allowance for one year, and plenty of surveillance. But it still gets to meet on campus, and to be affiliated with SFSU, and we can bet it will work this censorship issue for all it is worth. My guess is that GUPS will either get its university URL restored in short order, or it will put up the same site at an off-campus server where SFSU administrators can't touch it.

I end with a disclaimer of my own: the aim of this post is not to endorse the content of GUPS' expression, but to defend the group's right to express its beliefs. My point, finally, is not to diminish the seriousness of GUPS' actions, or to belittle the impact GUPS' anti-Semitic expression has had on those it targets, but simply to clarify the issues at stake in what is a very ugly business all round. If one is to fight effectively, one has to know what one is fighting, and one has to know the rules of the game.