The Catholic University of America has dismantled an Israeli-flagged memorial to victims of the Hamas terror attack for violating a campus ban on foreign banners.
Administrators said they removed several hundred Israeli flags from the university lawn last Tuesday — the second anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks — after a student group disregarded a request to change the memorial before erecting it.
A campus official mistakenly approved the group’s request to use the prominent green space, which adjoins a student center at the heart of the private campus in Northeast Washington, administrators said.
“The University regrets that the enforcement of the policy coincided with a deeply significant day of remembrance for those affected by the horrific Oct. 7 terrorist attack just two years ago,” university spokesperson Karna Lozoya told The Washington Times. “The enforcement of the flag policy is not a reflection in any way of the University’s views on the terrorist attack on Israel.”
Ms. Lozoya referenced a statement that university President Peter Kilpatrick made after the attacks, in which 1,200 civilians were killed and more than 200 taken hostage.
“Hamas is a terrorist organization and seeks the annihilation of the state of Israel,” Mr. Kilpatrick said on Oct. 12, 2023. “Its abhorrent acts of terrorism against Israel merit the strongest condemnation.”
The private university allows only the U.S., Vatican City and D.C. flags in publicly accessible spaces.
But the school appears to enforce that policy inconsistently.
Felipe Avila, a senior nursing major from Las Vegas and campus president of CUA Students Supporting Israel, said his group planned the Gaza memorial after seeing other groups hang foreign flags inside the Edward J. Pryzbla Student Center last year.
He shared photographs that depicted Ukrainian and Palestinian banners hanging in clear violation of campus policy.
“Our demands are simple,” Mr. Avila, 21, said in an email. “First, a public apology for the profound disrespect shown to a memorial for terror victims. Second, the university must make a choice on its flag policy: either enforce it equally for every student group, or remove a rule they are unwilling to apply fairly.”
The Palestinian and Ukrainian flags were posted indoors, but Mr. Avila’s group placed the Israeli flags on the campus’ most prominent lawn last Monday evening.
He said his 35-member group awoke to find the flags gone without warning and an email “revoking our approval” for the space.
When group members reported the memorial’s removal to Jacques Moore, CUA’s director of events and conference services, they found the flags bagged up in his office.
Reached by email this week, Mr. Moore declined to comment on the incident.
Students Supporting Israel, an activist network with more than 140 collegiate chapters nationwide, called the flags’ removal “a serious moral lapse” in a statement to The Times.
“The removal of a peaceful memorial, especially one approved in advance, sends a troubling and exclusionary message to Jewish and pro-Israel students: that their grief is less valid and their voices less welcome,” the group’s national office said in an email.
The group noted “clear proof” of Palestinian flags displayed on campus in the past.
“This inconsistency raises serious questions about whether the university is applying its policies fairly to all students,” the statement added.
A spokesperson for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a leading Muslim advocacy group, declined to comment on the incident, citing unfamiliarity with Students Supporting Israel.
A Catholic University official confirmed Wednesday that the Palestinian student club no longer exists on campus.
Ms. Lozoya, the university spokeswoman, said there was no record of administrators granting permission to fly a Palestinian flag in the student center.
“If a flag is flown without permission, and staff become aware of it, we require that it be removed,” she said.
According to Mr. Avila, his campus chapter is considering legal action if the university fails to enforce the flag policy fairly. He said he was unaware of administrators applying it to any other group in his more than three years on campus.
“It is fundamentally dishonest for the university to hide behind a ’flag policy’ that they conveniently ignore for other student organizations,” Mr. Avila said. “When a rule is used to silence one viewpoint, it stops being a policy and becomes a pretext for discrimination.”
Some constitutional law experts were divided on whether a First Amendment lawsuit would succeed against the school.
“CUA is a private institution, so there is no First Amendment issue,” said Josh Blackman, a constitutional law professor at South Texas College of Law in Houston. “Selective enforcement [of the flag ban] is a bad policy, but it is not unconstitutional for a private university.”
Ilya Shapiro, a libertarian constitutional law expert at the Manhattan Institute, said the Trump administration could still sue if an investigation proves the university violated the viewpoint neutrality required for federal funding.
“The ‘flag policy’ is a pretext for silencing student expression,” Mr. Shapiro said. “The student organizers would thus have contractual claims against the university, but the First Amendment and other federal civil-rights protections also apply because CUA accepts federal funding.”
William A. Jacobson, a Cornell University law professor specializing in civil rights, said the university should enforce its professed tolerance of different groups.
“To the extent a private campus has limited free speech rights, such as CUA’s flag policy, it’s important to apply that policy consistently,” Mr. Jacobson said.
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.
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