A panel discussion about Palestinian rights at will be allowed to move ahead following a challenge by a group of Jewish students at the school.
A Superior Court judge on Thursday ruled against Jewish students at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst who argued an upcoming forum was anti-Semitic and should be forced off campus.
The panel, titled "Not Backing Down: Israel, Free Speech and the Battle for Palestinian Human Rights," is scheduled for Saturday and features anti-Israel supporters of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, including musician Roger Waters, Women's March leader Linda Sarsour, and professor and former CNN commentator Marc Lamont Hill.
The event is being sponsored by three UMass departments: the Department of Communication; the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; and the Resistance Studies Initiative UMass.
According to the event page, the panel will include a discussion of what it called "recent attacks on [Minnesota] Rep. Ilhan Omar and other progressives who have spoken out against Israel's 50-year military occupation of Palestinian land and criticized pro-Israel pressure groups for conflating legitimate criticism of Israeli government policies with 'anti-Semitism.'"
Omar has accused American Jews of dual loyalty and said Israel had "hypnotized the world."
Sarsour has warned Muslims against "humanizing Israelis" and praised Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist Rasmea Odeh, who served a life sentence in Israel for her involvement in two terrorist attacks, one of which took the lives of two Israelis.
Lamont Hill was fired from CNN after he called for "a free Palestine from the river to the sea," code for the destruction of Israel often used by Hamas and groups bent on annihilating the Jewish state.
Eighty organizations urged the University of Massachusetts in Amherst to rescind all named university sponsorship of an event next month that the groups allege will "incite animosity towards supporters of Israel, including Jewish and pro-Israel students on your campus."
In a letter to UMass Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy, the organizations requested that in the future, UMass faculty will be prohibited from using the university's name or resources to further their own personal or political agenda.
"This is not an educational event but a political rally," stated the letter. "Rather than aiming to promote an understanding of a highly contentious and polarizing issue by including speakers with a variety of perspectives, this event includes speakers with only one extremely partisan perspective and clearly aims to promote a political cause and encourage political action."
"Providing the imprimatur of three academic departments to such a politically motivated and directed event violates the core academic mission of the university, suppresses student expression and impedes the free exchange of ideas so essential for any university," it continued.
Judge Robert Ullmann said he couldn't take action against the forum just because someone may say something "that fits someone's definition of anti-Semitism."
University officials say UMass is "committed to the principles of free speech and academic freedom."
