George Mason University reckons with terror-supporting students on campus
GMU law professor David Bernstein: ‘There haven’t been a lot of terrorism cases on campuses around the country. Why is it that there are several at our university?’

Robert Knopes/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Graduates pass a statue of George Mason on the campus of George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia.
Several pro-Israel individuals affiliated with George Mason University are expressing concern with the university’s response after pro-terrorism materials were found in the home of two of its students and a third student was charged with plotting a mass causality attack.
The worries persist even as local Jewish leaders are praising how the public university in Fairfax, Va., has handled these threats.
George Mason University’s administration suspended its Students for Justice in Palestine chapter last November after two of the group’s student leaders vandalized a campus building with anti-Israel graffiti — and barred the two women from campus for four years. The university also expelled a freshman student who was charged with plotting a terror attack against the Israeli consulate in New York. Administrators later conducted a meeting with Jewish groups to discuss safety and security on campus.
But the university’s response to the developments avoided any mention of the suspects’ antisemitic motivations or their Islamist sympathies. The police search of the home of the George Mason SJP leaders, sisters Jena and Noor Chanaa, found firearms, scores of ammunition and pro-terror materials, including Hamas and Hezbollah flags and signs that read “death to America” and “death to Jews.”
The university also hasn’t publicly addressed how the freshman student charged with plotting a terror attack — an Egyptian national with a history of spreading ISIS content online — could be admitted to the university without any vetting as part of the admissions process.
“As criminal proceedings progress, the university will take appropriate action on student code of conduct violations,” George Mason University President Gregory Washington wrote in a message to the campus community. In a statement to JI following the second incident, a university spokesperson said that the school could not “speculate on broader implications.”
The recent incidents come as the Department of Education is conducting an investigation into GMU’s handling of antisemitic discrimination and potential violations of Title VI, a federal statute that bars discrimination based on national origin.
“There needs to be a reckoning to what extent the environment at the university has become conducive to radicalism and extremism and antisemitism in ways that could be dealt with without violating First Amendment rights,” David Bernstein, a law professor at George Mason’s Antonin Scalia Law School, told Jewish Insider.
“There haven’t been a lot of terrorism cases on campuses around the country,” Bernstein continued. “Why is it that there are several at our university? Could we be speaking up more about antisemitism and extremism? Should we have made greater efforts to disassociate the university from pro-Hamas sentiment which appeared on campus almost immediately after Oct. 7?”
Jewish communal leaders on campus and in the Washington area have come to George Mason University’s leadership’s defense in the aftermath of these incidents.
Vicki Fishman, director of Virginia government and community relations at the JCRC of Greater Washington, told JI that the university’s “diligence in enforcing its rules is an element of why these three students were stopped in their activities.”
“We’re not condemning the university administration, [which is] showing leadership,” Fishman said.
Rabbi Daniel Novick, executive director of George Mason University Hillel, said to JI that the campus group was “grateful that [the administration] is making these efforts to learn more and do more and making known clear steps to ensure the safety of our Jewish students.”
In a joint statement on Jan. 10, Fishman and Novick thanked university leadership for “meeting with us, hearing our concerns, and deploying the full weight of the university’s security and disciplinary measures to prevent these students from perpetrating harm on campus.”
Ken Marcus, the founder of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, whom Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin appointed to the board of visitors of GMU in July, confirmed to JI that the school administration has tasked him with working to combat antisemitism. Marcus declined to provide details.
Marcus said he has been “very concerned, even alarmed,” at recent developments involving antisemitic activity at the university.
“My role has mostly involved asking a lot of very pointed questions of the administration, for which I have gotten some answers and am expecting more in the days and weeks to come,” Marcus told JI. “There is a lot more that needs to be done and my hope has been to be a part in making sure that they are completed.”
Marcus added: “Although George Mason has had significant, high-profile challenges in the area of campus antisemitism, we have also been active in developing strong responses, including the new International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance policy” on defining antisemitism, Marcus said. “Needless to say, not everyone has liked that.” (GMU officially endorsed the IHRA definition of antisemitism in August. According to Marcus, it provided a model that Harvard University built on for its adoption of IHRA earlier this week).
A source involved with George Mason Jewish life expressed frustration with the school’s Hillel and JCRC for not condemning the administration’s muted response and called for the groups to “do more publicly beyond statements — controlling the narrative won’t change the problems Jewish students face,” the source told JI.
“What’s being done is the opposite of what’s really needed here, which is to push back against the administration. Since Oct. 7, there has been very little engagement with Jewish student groups on campus and in part that’s because the university has not done enough.”
Evelyn Johnston, president of Students Supporting Israel at George Mason University and a sophomore studying international security and law, echoed the urgency for a more explicit response to antisemitism from administration — while also expressing understanding for Jewish groups’ defense of the university.
“I’m glad the administration finally took the necessary steps to ban SJP, but right now it’s an interim suspension. That suspension should be final and unequivocal,” Johnston told JI. “Allowing people who support violence to congregate at our university [and to] have access to university funds, should not [happen] in any circumstance.”
Johnston called for the Chanaa sisters to be “permanently expelled and their degrees should not be valid.”
“They committed felony vandalism and allowing behavior like this to continue and not condemning it in the strongest possible terms puts us in danger and makes us unsafe.” Johnston also noted that since SJP’s temporary suspension, SSI has been cautious about holding events.
“These groups are getting smaller but they are also getting more radical as time goes on, especially with the administration finally suspending SJP,” she said. “We were very concerned that there would be some retribution … SJP has repeatedly violated university regulations. They have done everything possible to break as many rules as possible, as quickly as possible, they’ve promoted pro-terror messaging time and time again [and for a long time] received zero repercussions.”
Responding to Hillel’s approval of the university’s handling of antisemitism, Johnston suggested that the campus group’s goal is to “protect their people, which generally comes down to using their administrative connections to talk to administration behind closed doors but in the end not make a lot of noise so they don’t become a target for SJP.”
That leaves student-led groups, such as SSI, to fill a gap, according to Johnston.
“It’s important that we have multiple organizations fill multiple roles. Hillel gives a space to students who may not be fully in on the Israel issue,” she said. “Organizations like SSI step into these issues. We’ve been meeting with administration members regularly since Oct. 7 to make sure all the regulations are ironed out and bring SJP incidents to the attention of the administration.”
Fishman said that the administration “is not necessarily perfect, but has been in conversation and in learning mode” with Jewish leaders for years to address safety of students, noting that she was “impressed” by the most recent meeting.
The joint statement also announced that George Mason agreed to enter into the Campus Climate Initiative run by Hillel International, which “assess the climate for Jewish students and develop a campus-specific action plan to enhance Jewish students’ sense of belonging,” according to Hillel.
Fishman told JI that the timing of entering into the program was “coincidental” and not related to the recent pro-terrorism incidents.
“CCI is independent of these three students and something that the university had been interested in participating in for some time,” Fishman said. CCI launched in 2020 to address antisemitism on more than 50 college campuses. “I don’t know that there’s a response to the three students, because [the administration’s] actions were involved with those three students being stopped from what they were doing,” Fishman said.
Bernstein said he would have liked to see “more of an acknowledgement by the university of the antisemitism aspect, not just that there were students who happened to violate the law, but that there was antisemitic material.”
Bernstein noted a double standard, pointing to a “very strong statement” denouncing Islamophobia from the school’s president in November 2023 after three Palestinian college students had been shot in Vermont, an incident that was unrelated to GMU. “It does make one wonder why there hasn’t been a similarly strong, or even stronger, statement about events going on on campus,” Bernstein said.
At the same time, Bernstein recognized that Hillel directors nationwide are “in a very delicate situation of balancing their relationship with the university versus standing up for Jewish students.”
“If you’re a Hillel director, you want to have a good relationship with the administration,” he said. “It puts you in a difficult position to be adversarial, you want to be cooperative with your university. In some situations standing up for Jewish students will involve having a good relationship with the university.”