“Instagram the Intifada”: New Report Maps Students for Justice in Palestine Social Network
A first-of-its-kind study analyzing the social network surrounding Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) has provided new insights into the group’s organization, leadership, and affiliations.
The study’s findings were reported yesterday by the National Association of Scholars:
“Sure enough, the account that appeared most often across all lists was @nationalsjp, the National Students for Justice in Palestine coalition. The Columbia University SJP chapter placed third, with Harvard and Boston University chapters placing seventh and eighth, respectively.”
The study also reveals many journalists and organizations close to SJP, in a laundry list that reads like a “Who’s Who” of anti-Israel activists, to name a few:
- Jewish Voice for Peace (@jewishvoiceforpeace)
- BDS Movement (@bdsnationalcommittee)
- Al Jazeera English (@aljazeeraenglishVerified)
- The People’s Forum (@peoplesforumnyc)
- CODEPINK (@codepinkalert)
- The Mapping Project (@mapping_project) and
- Linda Sarsour (@lsarsour)
among many others found on pages 10-12 of the report.
The NAS based its findings on an original dataset showing accounts followed by at least 20 SJP chapters out of the 111 universities sampled in the study.
SJP activists were among the worst offenders in the recent congressional report on campus antisemitism we covered here, which repeatedly cited them for conducting unauthorized protests, harassing and intimidating Jewish students, and calling for the destruction of the Jewish state. Local chapters of SJP led the anti-Israel protests and encampments that disrupted daily life on the country’s college campuses in the aftermath of the October 7th attacks in southern Israel.
The goal of the NAS study was to “understand the organization of SJP, to identify SJP’s true leadership, and to determine the groups that SJP is most closely associated with and influenced by.”
But how, exactly, hundreds of SJP university chapters have coordinated with others over the past year—and in particular, with the National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP)—has until now been shrouded behind “a veil of anonymity”:
Cutting through the thicket of accounts in SJP’s social network is an ambitious undertaking, and the report acknowledges there is still much more data to explore. But we now have somewhere to start: an extensive list of leads for further inquiry into SJP—a group whose “presence on campuses and the threat it represents has gone nowhere.”
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