Professors being fired from jobs for pro-Palestine speech, solidarity
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Professors of fields such as politics, sociology, literature, health, regional studies, Middle East and African studies, and more across the US have been either suspended or fired for pro-Palestine speech.
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People walk past the remnants of an encampment of tents in Harvard Yard on the campus of Harvard University, Tuesday, May 14, 2024, in Cambridge, Mass. (AP)
Scholars and academics committed to the cause of freeing Palestine are being fired by the institutions they are employed in, with the prime examples and testimonies coming out of the supposed land of democracy and free speech: the United States.
Professors of fields such as politics, sociology, literature, health, regional studies, Middle East and African studies, mathematics, education, and more have been either suspended or fired for pro-Palestine speech.
Some educators have been teaching for years and others for decades, while some were newly hired. Professors have even joined their students in the encampments on campuses in solidarity with Gaza with some arrested and others beaten by police.
Mohamed Abdou, a visiting professor in Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African studies at Columbia University (only until the end of the semester), told The Intercept, “This is beyond the new McCarthyism. This has to deal fundamentally with Islamophobia, anti-Muslim racism, anti-Arab racism, anti-Palestinian racism."
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Abdou referred to Columbia University Minouche Shafik by saying, “What she effectively did was blacklist me globally," adding. “I’m against any form of authoritarianism."
While university administrations try to appease Israeli donors, over 3,000 students have been arrested nationwide in the US for partaking in pro-Palestine protests on their campuses.
Professor Danny Shaw said, “I was fired after 18 years as a professor of Latin American and Caribbean studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice,” as he was notified last month by administrators at the college, which is part of the public City University of New York system, that he lost the chance to be reappointed to his adjunct position.
“I saw a genocide in motion, so I began to organize demonstrations and teach-ins and conferences,” Shaw expressed.
Another university, CUNY, cut ties with many of its professors as well because of their pro-Palestine speech.
One professor, Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda, who is a Japanese literature scholar formerly at CUNY’s Hunter College, stated to The Intercept that a student reported some of her social media posts to the head of her department back in November - just one month after Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.
She said that nothing in her posts was antisemitic or insinuated.
“The only thing I have done,” she said, “is to criticize the state of Israel for its 75-year brutal occupation of Palestine and criticize Americans for their complicity or silence in this genocide.”
Back at the end of April when the encampments first kicked off at Columbia University, over 1,400 academics issued an open letter pledging to boycott activities "held at or officially sponsored by Columbia University and Barnard College" unless the University expunges the infractions from protesting students' records and the presidents of both schools step down.
Read more: How Columbia University is the new face of the Intellectual Intifada
The letter entailed two demands. The first is for Barnard College, Teacher's College, and Columbia University to "expunge all charges (including suspensions) from and restore campus privileges to the students who protested, as well as reinstate suspended student groups Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine and Columbia Jewish Voices for Peace." The second is for Columbia President Minouche Shafik and Barnard President Laura Rosenbury to resign and for the police to be removed from the campus.
In summary, US universities, instead of upholding their students' rights to peaceful protest and fostering an environment conducive to First Amendment-protected discourse, succumbed to pressure from affluent donors and congressional members. They opted for cracking down on student demonstrators.
