Despite being banned from campus, UCLA’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter is actively lobbying candidates to influence upcoming student government elections, Jewish Insider has learned. 

SJP contacted candidates and asked them to complete an attached questionnaire in order to secure the group’s endorsement, according to an email reviewed by JI. SJP is permitted to endorse in the race as an “external organization” since it is no longer officially recognized on campus, according to the election board’s guidelines. 

“This is more proof that the anti-Jewish movement — even when banned from our campus — continues to break the rules to intimidate their fellow UCLA students,” UCLA Hillel’s executive director, Daniel Gold, told JI. “Student government should honor premier student leaders — and should be free of any influence by those banned for bad behavior.”

A UCLA student affairs spokesperson told JI, “Students for Justice in Palestine is not recognized as an official organization at UCLA nor receives any university resources. We want to make clear that candidates for student government may choose to ignore questions as they see fit.” 

UCLA banned SJP as a campus organization indefinitely in March 2025 after the group led a demonstration outside the home of UC Regent Jay Sures, who is Jewish. SJP members left red handprints on Sures’ garage door, accusing him of having “blood on his hands” amid the Israel-Hamas war.

Last month, UCLA’s student government condemned a campus event featuring former Israeli hostage Omer Shem Tov, labeling the speaker selection as “selective platforming of narratives that obscure the broader reality of ongoing state violence” and “a troubling disregard for Palestinian life.”   

Sures, who is also vice chairman of United Talent Agency, told JI at the time that UCLA’s student government was “shortsighted, antisemitic or both,” and called its members “lunatics” for condemning Shem Tov’s speech.