LOS ANGELES — UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk announced Wednesday the interim suspension of two pro-Palestine student groups following a protest at a University of California regent’s home that resulted in vandalism and harassment of a family member.
According to a statement from Frenk, approximately 50 protesters from Students for Justice in Palestine and Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine gathered outside Regent Jonathan “Jay” Sures’ Brentwood home on Feb. 5, leaving red-colored handprints on the outer walls of his home and hanging banners on the property’s hedges, The Daily Bruin reports. Protesters pounded on drums and held up a “threatening” sign that read, “Jonathan Sures, you will pay until you see your final day.” They also surrounded the vehicle of one of Sures’ family members, preventing their “free movement.”
While the LAPD investigates potential crimes during the incident at Sures’ home, UCLA said it is not pursuing campus charges against individual students.
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In a social media post, Graduate Students for Palestine said they targeted Sures, who is Jewish, because of his connections to the Anti-Defamation League, according to NBC Los Angeles. They also allege he is partly responsible for “protecting UC investments in genocide and weapons manufacturing,” and that he was behind a new UC policy that they claim singles out supporters of Palestine in the war in Gaza. In July 2024, UC regents approved a policy banning political statements on schools’ homepages.
“The University affirms the rights of individual university members, and of groups of University members, to author and publish statements and circulate them in their own private networks or on an individual University community member’s page on a unit’s website,” the policy states.
In another posts, the groups wrote, “Regents have repeatedly kicked us out of their meetings, canceled forums for public comment, and criminalized our attempts to protest investment policies. We have taken our issues straight to the Regents because they have systematically militarized our campus in response.”
As part of the suspension, the groups can no longer reserve space for meetings on campus, apply for student club funding, or affiliate themselves with UCLA.
UCLA joins several other UC campuses that have banned or suspended SJP groups, LA Times reports. The group is suspended through Sept. 2026 at UC Santa Cruz and through Nov. 2029 at UC Irvine. At UC San Diego, the group was charged last spring with activities “incompatible with the orderly operation of campus.” It did not renew its campus group status in the fall.
