EXCLUSIVE: George Mason Professors Demand End to Pro-Hamas Activity

Almost 20 professors at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School sent a letter urging the school’s president to crack down on pro-Hamas, anti-Israel activity in the student body.

Three GMU students of Middle Eastern origin have had recent run-ins with the police over weapons and pro-terror materials, The Daily Signal previously reported.

Two of the students are Palestinian American sisters and leaders in the school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, one of the main organizers of the protests, riots, and encampments at George Mason, Columbia, and other universities over the past year. A raid of their home uncovered guns, ammunition, and antisemitic and anti-American “hate” material.

Another George Mason University student, an Egyptian national named Abdullah Ezzeldin Taha Mohamed Hassan, was arrested in December for “distribution of information relating to explosives, destructive devices, and weapons of mass destruction in furtherance of the commission of a federal crime of violence” to an FBI informant, according to the charging papers.

The 16 professors sent GMU’s president, Gregory Washington, an emailed letter calling him to show “at least as much concern for antisemitic rhetoric, intimidation, and violence on and off campus as you have about other public issues.”

“It would be very nice and indeed useful right now to be able to tell colleagues, friends, and reporters who are inquiring that the university administration has done everything it could to disassociate itself from those who have been fomenting antisemitic, pro-terrorist sentiment on campus,” the message says, “but we both know that would be false.”

The professors say that GMU’s administration can no longer treat “overt pro-terrorist organizing at GMU as solely a matter of freedom of speech” when three students have been implicated in potential domestic terrorism.

The professors ask the president to denounce masked pro-terrorist demonstrations on campus and enforce a no-mask policy on campus, per Virginia law.

“You consistently declined to do the former, and the latter was only done in a desultory manner, and only upon the insistence of the state’s attorney general,” the letter says.

Washington responded to the professors saying GMU has been “far from silent on this issue” and has “taken a very different tact in addressing it than many of our peers.”

“We have spoken out and condemned the Oct 7 attack twice. We have spoken out against antisemitism directly in our communications as well,” he said, offering a link to his Nov. 2, 2023 letter. “We have also engaged our faculty publicly to help educate students on this matter and both Jewish and Muslim faculty have responded with programs addressing the conflict.”

Regarding Virginia law prohibiting masks on campus, Washington said George Mason has reached out both to the “Commonwealth’s Attorney and to Attorney General Miyares for guidance.”

“Initially, we have been told by the Commonwealth’s Attorney that offenses will be treated as only secondary offenses, and thus not something that police would be warranted to cite individuals for unless they were also being cited for a primary offense,” he told the professors. “Our request for clarification went to the Attorney General, and we still await his response.”

Following The Daily Signal’s report about the potential terrorist activity on GMU’s campus, president Washington also emailed the university community to say the the arrest seemed to have no connection to the two Palestinian American sisters whose home was searched in November.

“The recent developments have caused the university to take additional appropriate measures to maintain the safety of the university community,” he said in an email obtained by The Daily Signal.

GMU did not respond to The Daily Signal‘s request for comment.

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