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‘SJP is in essence demanding an employment action based on national origin,’ alumni group argues
Students with the University of Virginia’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter recently called for the resignation of Yael Grushka-Cockayne, dean of the Darden School of Business, prompting concerned alumni to question why administrators have yet to publicly defend her.
The SJP chapter wants Dean Grushka-Cockayne to resign because she served in the Israeli Defense Forces from 1993 until 1996.
“We refuse to let our University be led by people who endorse, support, and actively took part in genocide, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing,” states the petition demanding her resignation.
The petition even highlights the fact that she won an “outstanding officer award.”
Grushka-Cockayne was raised in both the U.S. and Israel and holds dual-citizenship. She has been lauded for her global perspectives and is the first woman to permanently lead the business school in its 70-year history.
Campus leadership has not responded to the petition in defense of Dean Grushka-Cockayne, prompting the Jefferson Council, a center-right UVA alumni group, to publish a series of posts demanding campus leadership take a stand.
“Let’s be perfectly clear about this: our new dean is being threatened with removal from her new position solely because she is an Israeli, where universal military service is mandated with few exceptions,” the council wrote.
The group added that a person’s national origin is a protected class under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as well as UVA’s “Preventing and Addressing Discrimination and Harassment” handbook.
“The SJP is in essence demanding an employment action based on national origin,” the council argued.
Dean Grushka-Cockayne, the University of Virginia’s media relations division, the Darden School of Business, and SJP’s UVA chapter did not respond to requests from The College Fix seeking comment.
Grushka-Cockayne became dean on Aug. 1. “Her research and teaching activities focus on data science, forecasting, project management and behavioral decision-making,” her bio states.
Tom Neale, co-founder and president emeritus of the Jefferson Council, said the only reason the student group is saying she cannot be dean “is because she’s Jewish and she fought for the IDF.”
“Well, you have to if you’re in Israel. It’s the way it goes,” he said in an interview with The College Fix.
Neale argues that UVA administrators should take some form of action against SJP, which has been suspended at other schools such as Columbia and George Washington universities.
He said the university has an obligation to protect its Jewish community, both students and staff, and that suspending SJP would not run afoul of free-speech laws because pro-Palestinian activism has crossed the line into physical violence on campus at UVA.
“Does that mean that the university should get rid of SJP? I’m not saying that. The reason they did at Columbia and a few others is that they were violent. They took over buildings,” he said.
But the situation at the University of Virginia rings somewhat similar, he said.
In October 2023, a Jewish student wore a yarmulke and a Star of David and carried an Israeli flag to a demonstration. There, he “was berated, insulted, threatened with violence, and physically assaulted,” alleged a lawsuit the student filed in 2024, which was settled out of court.
In 2024, police stepped in to shut down a rowdy anti-Israel campus encampment, prompting two dozen arrests.
“I know a lot of the Jewish parents who have come to us. And their kids are afraid to admit they’re Jewish. That’s how bad it is,” Neale told The Fix. “And these aren’t cowardly kids. There is an overt current of hate towards Jews at UVA. The administration is well aware of it and they don’t do anything.”
A week after its original letter calling for the university to condemn SJP and defend the dean, still seeing no response or defense from UVA, the Jefferson Council published a follow-up on Aug. 28 deploring the silence of the university.
The council pointed out that nobody affiliated with the university had spoken against SJP’s petition except for student newspaper columnist Joshua Hawkins.
Hawkins pointed out that, since IDF service is compulsory for Israelis, “If SJP believes that IDF service should prohibit the University from hiring an otherwise qualified candidate, then nearly every person raised within the borders of the Jewish state would be rendered automatically ineligible to ever serve on our University faculty.”
“That is insane,” he wrote in his mid-August op-ed. “SJP’s standard would impose such an ethnicity-based barrier on every Israeli citizen with almost no exceptions.”
MORE: Stunning cowardice at the University of Virginia
