By A.J. Caschetta, JNS
It's possible that the administration desperately wants to cover up past policy failures. Its interaction with me suggests an ongoing public relations failure.
While some university administrations give in to their Students for Justice in Palestine protesters, and others fight back, the University of Rochester in New York state simply denies that SJP exists on its campus.
I learned about this baffling approach to the SJP problem after I wrote in May about a protest at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), where I teach, that was exacerbated by the SJP chapter at the nearby University of Rochester.
The next day, I received this email (quoted in its entirety) from the school: “Dear AJ, I just read your piece ‘How One University Dealt With Pro-Hamas Protesters’ and wanted to request a correction. The University of Rochester does not have an SJP chapter.” — Sara Miller, spokesperson, university marketing and communication, University of Rochester
I knew that the school did, in fact, have an SJP chapter.
I saw with my own eyes that many people at the protest on my campus identify themselves as SJP members, including one of the speakers. I have read about the antics of the “University of Rochester Students for Justice in Palestine” and “University of Rochester SJP Chapter” in local news outlets, and national ones like Inside HigherEd and Mondoweiss. The SJP.UR Instagram page triumphantly announced on April 24 that it was “accepting executive applications for the 2025-26 academic year!”
This didn’t add up.
Having read two weeks earlier that Yale University had “de-recognized” its SJP chapter, I responded to the message (quoted in its entirety): “Thanks for contacting me, Ms. Miller. Did the University of Rochester recently ‘de-recognize’ the SJP chapter? There were quite a few people at RIT on Nov. 13, 2023, who claimed to be the [University of Rochester] SJP. Also, SJP.UR has a very active social-media presence. Is it possible that SJP.UR was never an officially recognized chapter (similar to what RIT faces now), just a group of people abusing the [university’s] brand?”
Her reply came back minutes later (again quoted in its entirety):“Did the University of Rochester recently ‘de-recognize’ the SJP chapter? No. Is it possible that SJP.UR was never an officially recognized chapter (similar to what RIT faces now), just a group of people abusing the [university’s] brand? Yes.”
I was ready to amend my article if I had made a mistake, though I knew that I hadn’t. So I asked for a quotable statement, such as “There has never been an officially recognized Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at the University of Rochester.” Miller demurred, responding, “I’m not interested in pursuing at this moment anything beyond the clarification in your article.”
Before I had a chance to respond, I received another email—this time from a high-ranking official at RIT, my employer, informing me that someone at the University of Rochester had contacted him with the same request. The matter suddenly took on new urgency.
As I assembled the evidence to prove that no correction was necessary, I discovered some shocking new details about the school’s SJP problem that refute Miller’s claims.
Recognized student clubs at the school maintain a presence on the University of Rochester Campus Club Connection (CCC) website. No SJP presence can be found there today, but archived pages from 2021 and 2022 prove that there was an officially recognized chapter.
A partial capture of the leadership team page on May 24, 2021, shows the club “adviser” was Lydia Crews, whose LinkedIn page identifies her as “assistant director, Wilson Commons Student Activities at University of Rochester.” In another archived page, dated Dec. 23, 2021, the greeting states: “We are one of 250-plus SJP around the country with the support of National SJP.”
The Wayback Machine isn’t necessary to access the university’s Wilson Commons Student Activities website listing all “de-recognized” organizations. It shows, contrary to Miller’s claim, that the university’s SJP chapter was founded in 2020 and “de-recognized” on Feb. 1, 2023.
Even after it was “de-recognized,” the chapter continued sponsoring events on campus. On Nov. 21, 2023, the University of Rochester’s student newspaper, the Campus Times, mentions “an event in the Interfaith Chapel titled ‘Understanding and Healing: the Palestinian genocide’ was hosted on Oct. 20 by UR’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)” and other groups.
Curiously, the administration continued to communicate with its “de-recognized” SJP chapter about acceptable conduct at campus protests, as is shown in university president Sarah C. Mangelsdorf’s statement on Nov. 20, 2023. One sentence in particular stands out: “University leaders alerted SJP that their use of one specific slogan is understood by many as a call for physically harming Jewish people, all over the world, because of their religious or cultural identity.”
So why did the University of Rochester make such a fatuous request of me and the Rochester Institute of Technology? I’ve ruled out ignorance.
Miller has been employed by the university as spokesperson since 2012. She was promoted to assistant vice president and spokesperson in 2017, then to associate vice president of public relations and spokesperson in 2024. Surely, she knows the history of SJP on campus. She may also know why the SJP chapter was “derecognized” in February 2023.
I haven’t ruled out incompetence or desperation.
In January 2025, after Rochester expelled four students for distributing hundreds of posters depicting Jewish administration members and trustees as “Wanted” for genocide, an article in the Rochester Beacon by Justin O’Connor referred extensively to the school’s “Students for Justice in Palestine chapter,” quoted an “SJP statement” and featured Miller’s comments.
I doubt that Miller asked for a “correction” to this article. O’Connor, who calls himself a “young and gritty journalist” on his LinkedIn profile, is a Rochester graduate who was the “education chair” of the school’s SJP chapter, according to another archived page, dated April 4, 2022. Miller must have known that.
Despite the devious way that the university tried to make me rewrite history, and when I wouldn’t oblige, tried to leverage my employer into making me do so (they should have known better), I sympathize with the school’s trustees and even with Mangelsdorf, the school president. I believe they’re trying to wrest control from their anti-Israel student protesters and avoid a Department of Education Title VI investigation.
But it’s also possible that the administration desperately wants to cover up past policy failures. Its interaction with me suggests an ongoing public relations failure.
Perhaps denying the University of Rochester’s SJP chapter makes it easier for the administration to deny its Faculty for Justice in Palestine chapter, which poses even thornier problems. Regardless, putting the squeeze on me will not rid the school of its meddlesome SJP chapter.
Part 1 of this column can be found here.
Originally published by the Investigative Project on Terrorism.
