Colleges banned groups over antisemitism. Then new ones formed.

At George Washington University, a pro-Palestinian student group was suspended for projecting messages on a campus library that read “divestment from Zionist genocide now” and “glory to our martyrs.”

Farther north, Columbia University last week suspended two similar groups for repeatedly flouting college policies, such as holding unauthorized events. And Brandeis University banned its local Students for Justice in Palestine chapter because it “openly supports Hamas.”

The suspensions didn’t have their intended effect. New organizations quickly formed.

The emergence of new groups to supplant suspended ones is confounding colleges as they try to find a line between allowing protests that support a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war with those devolving into hate speech.

At Columbia, “the suspension of those two groups is nothing more than a suppression of speech,” said one Palestinian student who is a member of a new coalition, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, and declined to give his full name for fear of retribution.