Tipsheet

Duke and DePaul Universities Pull Funding for Students for Justice in Palestine Chapters

Amy Curtis
Amy Curtis  |  April 17, 2026 11:30 AM

The Duke chapter of the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) has had its university funding pulled after the group promoted a meeting using abhorrent antisemitic imagery.

That image portrayed Israel and the U.S. as pigs, and was originally featured in a Black Panther newspaper in the 1970s.

The condemnation was swift and deserved.

When the news broke in late March, some people reached out to Duke for comment and got no response.

On April 15, Duke not only froze funding for SJP, but it also revoked recognition of the campus chapter.

According to Stop Antisemitism, however, the students responsible for posting the imagery were not repremanded.

Here's more from The Chronicle:

Duke's Students for Justice in Palestine chapter has been suspended from organizational activity after the Office of Institutional Equity received complaints about an alleged antisemitic Instagram post, setting off a weeks-long dispute between the group and Student Affairs over the authority behind the disciplinary actions.

On March 24, Ben Adams, senior associate dean of students for QuadEx, informed SJP leaders that OIE had received complaints regarding a March 13 flyer promoting a SJP general body meeting published on the group's Instagram. According to email correspondence obtained by The Chronicle between SJP leadership and OIE, 10 students had filed complaints.

The flyer featured an illustration by artist Emory Douglas originally published in the newspaper The Black Panther in 1970, depicting two pigs — one labeled "U.S. Imperialism" holding the torch of liberty and the other labeled "Zionism" holding the Star of David. In a subsequent email to SJP leadership, Adams wrote that the depiction of the pig holding the Star of David is alleged harassment under the Policy on Prohibited Discrimination, Harassment and Related Misconduct (PPDHRM).

Adams, on behalf of Student Affairs, asked the group to remove the post, which it voluntarily did. Then, Student Affairs restricted SJP’s recognized group status and froze its funding.

This is a win for Jewish students and Duke and elsewhere.

It also illustrates that there is still an ongoing problem with antisemitism in American colleges and universities. Smith College was scheduled to hold a vote, at the prompting of its SJP chapter, to divest from Israel. The Trump administration is also suing Harvard over its antisemitism problem.

SJP was also banned from operating on the DePaul University Campus following a rally for "Palestine" during which SJP students reportedly demanded the removal of Jews from Israel, a violent revolution in America, and made threats to Jewish DePaul students.

But it's not limited to institutions of higher learning, either. In Massachusetts, the Concord-Carlisle School District just entered into a federal agreement to protect Jewish students from antisemitic harassment at the hands of their peers. This follows a string of antisemitic incidents in the district's high school and middle school from 2023 to 2025, which included the drawing of swastikas and the use of the word "Jew" as a derogatory slur.

In the two and a half years since the Hamas-led terror attacks in Israel, antisemitism has been on the rise in the U.S., especially on college and university campuses. While the Trump administration has made efforts to hold these institutions accountable, more work is needed to end the scourge.