The Yale Coalition for Peace (YCP) was a 500-member student organization on the campus of Yale University, established after 9/11 to protest against the prospect of a U.S. military response to the al Qaeda attacks. “What happened September 11th was wrong,” said YCP. “But revenge is not just. Revenge is not civil. And oppression is completely undemocratic.” Attempting to explain what may have motivated the 9/11 hijackers to carry out their deeds, YCP stated: “We urge a consideration of underlying political and economic causes [of the attacks], including an examination of past U.S. actions and foreign policy.”

YCP was a member of the Yale Social Justice Network, a far-left coalition of peace and socialist groups that sought to end United Nations sanctions against Iraq during Saddam Hussein‘s regime.

In January 2003, YCP members staged a “die-in” demonstration (feigning death) to protest the imminent U.S. invasion of Iraq. Two months later the group participated in a New Haven, Connecticut anti-war march that featured such slogans as: “Drop Bush, not Bombs,” and “Money for Jobs and Education! Not for War and Occupation!” The following day a few YCP members attended a pro-war counter-demonstration, where they turned their backs to the U.S. flag while the song “God Bless America” was played. “As Martin Luther King said, I feel this country is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world right now,” explained one YCP member. “I do not support our government’s actions and therefore will not participate in a song that is obviously meant to support this government’s actions.”

In April 2003, YCP collaborated with the Muslim Students Association and the Students for Justice in Palestine to sponsor a teach-in condemning the recently launched Iraq War. According to journalist Cinnamon Stillwell, the event was “overwhelmingly anti-American and anti-Israel, and occasionally anti-Semitic.”

In December 2003, YCP urged students to wear white armbands as a sign of protest against the injustices of the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

In November 2004, twelve members of YCP staged a 30-minute “die-in” to draw attention to the large number of Iraqi civilians who were being killed in the war-torn city of Fallujah. To promote the event, YCP members distributed flyers that read: “Without adequate food, running water, electricity and medical supplies, the 50,000 remaining residents of this now utterly smashed city [Fallujah] face a future of terrible hardship and suffering.”

In September 2005, YCP co-sponsored a speech by former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, titled “Parallel Deceptions: The Bush Agenda for War in Iraq and Iran.”

Yale associate professor of genetics Mazin Qumsiyeh, co-founder of New Haven’s Al-Awda chapter, was affiliated with YCP.

A notable leading member of YCP was Chesa Boudin, who was raised by Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn after his biological parents, Weather Underground terrorists Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert, had gone to prison.

YCP has been inactive since about 2006.