The Gaza war has led to factions on campuses across the United States. In a recent FAIR interview by Janine Jackson on the subject,  Wadie Said, a professor of law and a dean’s faculty fellow at the University of Colorado Law School, said that the vague use of the term material support has opened the door to criminalization of free speech.

Liberal interpretations of the term "material support" leads to a chilling effect which defies the rule of law, creates further divisions, and extends the reach of endless wars and deep rooted social problems.

Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project was the first decision by the US Supreme Court’s pitting First Amendment rights against national security interests since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The Court departed from a basic principle of the First Amendment which was that speech may not be penalized because of its viewpoint and even speech advocating crime deserves protection until it constitutes incitement, and that political association is constitutionally protected absent specific intent to further a group’s illegal ends.

This decision by the Court, which identified speech as material support, wrecked havoc on the nonprofit sector's committment to resolve international conflict through peaceful and nonviolent means.

Investigations that followed the ruling brought a loss of job opportunities, criminal repercussions based on often unfounded allegations of ties to terrorist groups, and put people and put them and their families at risk.

In reference to the Gaza war, unfounded accusations and the accompanying vitriol on campuses, the workplace, and elsewhere depends on a false diachotomy that unimaginably pits the highly visible slaughter of Palestinian civilians, including thousands of children against accusations of antisemitism. This false diachotomy is a self-generating process fueled by politicians, corporations, and organizations including the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) as one example.

In terms of muzzling dissent, Malak Afaneh, a law student at the University of California–Berkeley and a member of the local Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter, known as Berkeley Law Students for Justice in Palestine said “[w]hat we’re seeing are McCarthyesque tactics, like those used post-9/11.”

Reported by NBC News, The national SJP has had a "vehement" response to its speech acts interpreted as glorifying and or justifying Hamas'actions on October 7 and as promoting antisemitism. These speech acts produced by the national SJP could also be seen from yet another narrow point of view, but with some understanding of history, as a justification for horrific acts that represent a "historic win for Palestinian resistance".

Regarding material support, the speech acts presented by the national SJP quickly led to restrictions on its speech including the deactivation of some SJP chapters based on guilt by association without evidence of wrong doing or criminal intent.

As reported in NBC News, "The ADL and another Jewish rights group, the Brandeis Center, ... called on nearly 200 college presidents to investigate their chapters. Gov. DeSantis ordered Florida education officials to “deactivate” SJP chapters at the University of Florida and the University of South Florida, arguing that the “toolkit” constituted material support for a foreign terrorist organization.

"Columbia University and George Washington University, meanwhile, suspended their chapters for the rest of the fall term because they purportedly broke campus policies around holding public events and demonstrations....

"The American Civil Liberties Union and the civil rights organization Palestine Legal filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of students at the University of Florida, alleging that the state’s “deactivation” order violated the U.S. Constitution.

In the lawsuit, the ACLU argued that Florida officials had not provided evidence or a basis for the “material support” for terrorism allegation. The civil liberties group states that the Supreme Court, in the 2010 decision Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, found that “independent political advocacy” does not equal support of a terror group."

Some rank and file SJP members responded to the deactivation of chapters saying that any association with the national rhetoric did not necessarily reflect the motives behind their activism.

“'We don’t meet with them, we don’t really communicate with them, we don’t get funds from them,' said Malak Abuhashim, 21, a senior at Cornell University who has family in Gaza and is active in the campus SJP. 'It’s not really that close of a relationship...It’s really concerning to see things like this happening.'" the student added in reference to the recent restrictions. 'We are simply asking for the liberation of all people in the land of Palestine.'”

Abuhashim's comments represent how guilt by association is the heart of the matter when it comes to speech as a form of material support.

That has been the case for a long time. The two avenues are the courts which determines guilt or innocence or deportation.

In the case of the former, according to Human Rights Watch there are, US citizens of Palestinian heritage who are still in prison because Bush-era prosecutors decided —in part using Israeli government claims and even anonymous Israeli government witnesses—that their charitable activities labeled as material support were acts of  "terrorism".

In the case of the latter, deportation as associated with a perceived terrorist organization determined by the Secretary of State was passed by Congress in 1996. It is not tried in the courts. It is not considered punishment.

Despite the profound losses it can cause an individual, such as family and home, it lacks an effective remedy for the accused, including remedies for past legal errors.

As far as material support the only bulwark is the Supreme Courts' provisions that the speech that is being criminalized must be "in conjunction with," or" at the behest of." a terroist organization and that Independent advocacy is not covered.

Despite the Court's qualifiers, the damage by the very fact of an investigations of non-state groups and individuals based on little or no evidence is significant. It chills free speech and carries potential repercussions, for instance, where in the case of universities campus police become involved and more generally prosecutors with a lack of transparency can employ the term material support to whoever supports the need to stop the slaughter in Gaza. Possible bias in these situations is hard to prove.