Several professors at universities across the United States have been disciplined for their support of pro-Palestinian movements and student protests on college campuses.
At Columbia University, Katherine Franke, law professor and director of Columbia Law School’s Center for Gender and Sexuality Law, is currently under investigation at the school over an interview she gave earlier this year. Last week, she announced that she had filed a complaint against her law firm after the firm removed her as a client.
Maura Finkelstein, a tenured associate professor of anthropology at Muhlenberg College, a private liberal arts college in Allentown, Pennsylvania, was suspended in May for social media reposts on Instagram that students had complained about. I was fired. She appealed her dismissal.
Ruha Benjamin, a professor of African American studies at Princeton University, is being investigated by the university for her pro-Palestinian activism, at the same time the university is touting her genius grant to MacArthur.
These are examples of how professors who supported student movements against Israel’s war in Gaza faced consequences during their final year, when they disrupted campuses and triggered a slew of new regulations on university protests. These are just three examples.
“Reports of professors being investigated and disciplined for their comments about war are alarming. The University’s purpose is to stimulate debate involving controversial topics,” Columbia University Knight said. said Ramya Krishnan, senior staff attorney at the First Amendment Institute.
“For universities to function as itinerant censors who can punish faculty members for their private political speech greatly defeats that purpose.Professors are not allowed to carry out their duties except in the most unusual circumstances, i.e. by making statements. People should be able to speak out as citizens without retaliation, as long as their ability to do so is not compromised.”
In the case of Franke, a Columbia University professor, the investigation was sparked by comments she made on Democracy Now! in which she expressed concern about former Israeli soldiers studying at Columbia. “Columbia has a program with advanced students from other countries, including Israel. Many of the Israeli students who come to campus are fresh out of military service, so that’s something that many of us were concerned about,” she said. said. “And they are known to harass Palestinians and other students on our campuses, something the university has never taken seriously.”
Two law school colleagues complained about the interview, accusing Franke of creating a hostile environment for Israeli students. She was also censured by Columbia University’s president during a Congressional hearing in April.
Franke’s comments stem from an incident in which a pro-Palestinian protester was sprayed with a chemical, which the university later claimed was fart spray. The student and former IDF soldier who sprayed the chemical was suspended and is now suing the university.
“I’ve been at Columbia University since the late 1970s, and protests are something we celebrate not just at Columbia and Barnard, but actually on our campus,” Franke told the Guardian. “It is astonishing to see university leaders not defending the university and the academic enterprise, but instead attacking that great enterprise.”
Columbia University declined to comment.
Amid the investigation, Franke said her law firm, Outen & Golden LLP, fired her without cause in July 2024. A lawyer at the firm resigned in protest, and Ms. Franke filed an ethics lawsuit against the firm last month, claiming the firm forced her to quit. In a lawsuit with a major law firm owned exclusively by the university, the university found itself in a significantly disadvantageous situation.
Adam Klein, managing partner at Outen & Golden LLP, said in a statement that the firm’s decision to fire Franke was a policy change and that the firm did not violate any ethics rules. did. And given the immense passion and pain it would cause, we ultimately chose not to address any employee speech issues related to the dispute. ”
“Culture of fear”
Several other professors across the United States are currently facing investigations, criminal charges, and suspensions over pro-Palestinian speech. Many of them have tenure and are afforded some degree of due process.
Tiffany Willoughby-Herald, a professor of global and international studies at the University of California, Irvine, was charged with three misdemeanors, including resisting arrest, over the May 2024 pro-Palestinian protests.
MIT professor Michelle DeGraff has received a letter of reprimand and her pay raise is on hold after a dispute with her faculty over a request to teach a course on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in December 2023.
Stephen Thrasher, a journalism professor at Northwestern University, was suspended and is currently under investigation after police charged him with trying to protect students from arrest at a protest encampment over the summer. The charges against him were eventually dropped, but he remains suspended.
Finkelstein, a tenured professor at Muhlenberg College, was fired for sharing a post by Palestinian poet Remi Kanazi. She is the first tenured professor fired in the aftermath of the October 7, 2023 attacks, and the first professor fired since 2014 for criticism of Israel.
“Don’t be intimidated by Zionists,” Kanazi wrote in a Jan. 16 post. “Shame on them. Don’t let them in your space. Why should genocidal fascists be treated any differently than other straight-up racists?”
The university determined that the re-sharing of the posts violated the school’s equal opportunity and anti-discrimination policies.
An online petition calling for her firing accused Finkelstein, who is Jewish, of being biased against Jewish students for her posts and comments critical of Israel.
“I felt very unsafe on campus. I had my personal information stolen, my office location published, and I received a ton of hate mail and threats of violence online. Because I did,” Finkelstein said. “And I never felt like the university was trying to protect me.”
Mr. Finkelstein was placed on leave in January 2024 and was notified of termination in May 2024. In her appeal, she claims the university claims the post amounts to harassment of Jewish students and confuses anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism.
Last week, the university’s faculty and alumni launched a petition citing Finkelstein’s “unjustified disappearance from campus” and condemning the university’s “culture of fear and authoritarian restrictions on freedom.” A separate petition and open letter calls for an international boycott if Muhlenberg does not return by Oct. 25.
A Muhlenberg College spokesperson did not comment directly on either petition. “Muhlenberg College is deeply committed to freedom of expression and academic research,” they said in an email.
They added that following the dismissal, “the details of this matter will be kept confidential pending review by an elected faculty committee.” The faculty committee will submit a recommendation to the university for a decision.
At San Jose State University in California, judicial studies professor San Gere Kil has been suspended since May 2024 for his involvement as an advisor to a pro-Palestinian student group on campus, and is facing a possible dismissal. An investigation is still ongoing.
Khil served as co-chair of the California Teachers Association’s Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim Caucus from October 2023 until he resigned the day before his suspension.
She is accused of “coaching and encouraging students” to violate university policies and “engaging in harassing and offensive conduct and comments toward colleagues.” She denied the allegations and claimed the suspension was part of a campaign to suppress academic freedom against her.
Kir argued that prior to the spring 2024 campus protests, there was little awareness of the Israel-Gaza conflict and a culture of fear on campus about speaking out in support of Palestine.
“Many of these campuses have noble mission statements and values that embrace social justice, but I noticed this Palestinian exceptionalism on my campus and other campuses that were shrouded in silence. ”Kill said.
She cited the university’s campus statements on other conflicts, such as the war in Ukraine, but said nothing had been announced regarding the Gaza conflict.
“We cannot comment on ongoing personnel matters,” a San Jose State University spokesperson said in an email. Mr. Kill’s union, the California Teachers Association, did not respond to a request for comment on the story. Ms Kill had previously criticized the union’s lack of support for her case.
Mr. Finkelstein, the Muhlenberg professor who lost his job, urged his colleagues to keep talking about Palestine. “It’s not shocking to me that our institutions are trying to crack down on it, but it’s set such a terrible precedent. If it’s not a place where we can actually talk about these things, then the university… What is that?”
