University of Maryland President Darryll J. Pines threatened to call the police on a Jewish woman for emailing criticism of the school’s response to anti-Semitism, the same week he said freedom of speech meant he couldn’t stop an anti-Israel group from reserving a campus quad on the anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 attack, according to emails obtained by The Daily Wire.
The emails show that on August 24, Pines emailed the woman — the mother of a student, who had never emailed the president — asking her to halt all communications with members of the school’s anti-Semitism task force, lest he “pursu[e] further action, including, without limitation, seeking the assistance of our University of Maryland Police Department.”
On August 28, Pines replied to another Maryland resident who expressed concern about the university granting Students For Justice in Palestine (SJP) a reservation to take over nine acres in the center of campus for an October 7 event, similar to one held on the second day of school honoring Palestinian “martyrs.” In the email, Pines defended the group, saying it “simply wanted to exercise their first amendment and free speech right to honor those Palestinian lives that have been lost as a result of this conflict.”
Pines in the email echoed SJP’s false claim that “approximately 150,000 lives [have been] lost during this conflict.” Even Hamas estimates the total number killed to be 40,000.
A day after Pines defended SJP’s planned event, The Daily Wire reported that the president had approved the event over the objections of the campus rabbi, who conveyed the concerns of Jewish parents and students to Pines. On September 1, the University System of Maryland intervened, prohibiting all student groups from hosting events on October 7.
The same day, Pines sent an email to the university community suggesting the planned SJP event was cancelled to ensure the “safety” of the protesters, even though he acknowledged that “UMPD has assured me that there is no immediate or active threat to prompt this assessment.” His email did not describe why the October 7 date was significant except to say that it was the “upcoming one-year anniversary of October 7, 2023.”
The University of Maryland was one of several American schools whose campuses were wracked with anti-Semitism in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel that left more than 1,200 dead. In response, Pines announce the creation of a task force dedicated to fighting both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia — though there was no evidence of rampant Islamophobia on campus. The task force included a number of anti-Israel voices, including co-chair Shibley Telhami, who has accused Israelis of poisoning Arabs’ drinking water and smashing children’s toys, among other claims.
Pines’s task force also excluded some pro-Israel voices who were nominated, such as Gilad Chen, a Jewish professor, and Jeffrey Herf, a Holocaust expert.
All of this led one Jewish mother of a University of Maryland student to reach out to the task force, pressing it for information about its actions and raising concerns about its composition and asking where the boundaries of acceptable anti-Israel activity would be drawn. After becoming frustrated by a lack of information, she eventually called attention to Telhami’s social media posts and said “It’s LUDICROUS that someone who holds hateful views towards Israel (only democracy in the Middle East) and Jews is Chair of a Task Force on antisemitism!!!! Would you have a KKK member on this Taskforce?”
The Daily Wire is withholding the names of the parent, and the other Maryland resident who contacted Pines. The parent told The Daily Wire that “the hypocrisy of it all is shocking,” and that Pines’s missive only proved the “double standard” that she and other Jewish community members pressed him about.
“There was nothing [harmful in my emails], it was literally begging for accountability,” she said. “You established a task force and announced it, and now we’re just asking who’s on it, what’s it doing and when is it being rolled out?”
Pines, who did not respond to a request for comment, did not address the parent’s questions. Rather, he went on the attack, the emails show.
“It has come to my attention that you have recently sent several emails to certain members of our leadership team and faculty, as well as to the co-chairs of the UMD Joint Presidential-University Senate Task Force on Antisemitism and Islamophobia,” Pines wrote. “It is our view that those communications contain INAPPROPRIATE remarks and UNFOUNDED accusations, and otherwise reflect unacceptable behavior by any member of our community.”
“Immediately cease and refrain from sending any further communications to any members of the Task Force in connection with their work,” Pines added. Please know that should you fail to comply with this request, we will consider pursuing further action, including, without limitation, seeking the assistance of our University of Maryland Police Department (UMPD).”
Meanwhile, Pines’s email to the other resident–which he also fired off after that resident suggested that Pines, who is black, would have a different standard for speech aimed at blacks compared to speech aimed at Jews– seemed to contain “inaccurate” claims of its own.
Pines claimed that SJP “have both publicly and on social media condemned the horrific attack by Hamas that happened last fall on October 7, 2024 [sic].”
The Daily Wire reviewed the University of Maryland SJP chapter’s Instagram posts dating back to the terrorist attack and found none condemning Hamas or the terrorist attack. The group posted nothing on October 7, and the next day posted a “demand” that the university boycott and divest from Israel. It subsequently called the Israeli army “war criminals” using a “charade of self-defense” and demanded “Hands off Rahah Now,” referring to the location where Hamas was keeping an American hostage, who it later killed.
In a “statement of views,” the SJP chapter said in July that “UMD SJP unequivocally states that the Zionist state of Israel has no right to exist,” and that Palestinians have “the right to resist.”
“SJP unequivocally stands by international law as it outlaws the indiscriminate killing of civilians and establishes the right of Palestinians to carry out armed struggle,” the group wrote this week on Instagram.
“UMD SJP will NOT back down to threat by Zionists. We will remain committed to advocating for Palestine and we will still find ways to honor the martyrs of this genocide and mark one year of resistance! WE WILL NOT STOP,” it added soon after.
“We honor the lives of all martyrs of this genocide,” it said, saying “over 186,000 Palestinians [sic] have been brutally murdered by the Zionist entity within the past year.”
