Police barricade in front of The New School's University Center, New York. May 3, 2024.
6 months have passed since protests relating to issues around Israel/Palestine have started to escalate on US campuses with the student encampment movement. Now, although the protests have been less frequent in the new fall semester, universities have started to ramp up sanctions against faculty and staff due their protest activities.
According to a report by The Guardian, three professors from Columbia University, Muhlenberg College, and Princeton University, have joined many other faculty members who are being investigated or have been sanctioned by their universities’ administrations. In addition, Endangered Scholars Worldwide (ESW) has received information regarding the sanctioning of two professors and one staff member at The New School over their protest activity in March 2024. These developments have become all the more concerning in light of the election of Donald Trump as president on November 5, as threats to higher education and academic freedom are likely to increase and intensify in the near future.
Katherine Franke, a Professor of Law at Columbia Law School who works on gender and sexuality law, human rights, and constitutional law gave an interview to Democracy Now! in January 2024, criticizing her school’s inadequate response to two Israeli students spraying student protestors with an unidentified chemical substance. In the interview, she also said that over the past years, there has been a pattern of harassment towards Palestinians students on campus by Israeli students who had very recently served in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) before their arrival at Columbia. Franke’s statements were brought up during the April 2024 hearings of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, where House Representative Elise Stefanik interpreted her to have said “all Israeli students who have served in the IDF are dangerous and shouldn’t be on campus”.[1] Since February 2024, Franke has been under investigation. Meanwhile, Columbia University has recently reached a settlement of nearly $400,000 with one of the student assailants who sued the school after they got suspended.
Maura Finkelstein is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania. An expert in cultural and urban anthropology, Finkelstein is reportedly the first tenured faculty member to be fired for expressing pro-Palestine views over social media since October 7, 2023. Finkelstein was suspended by Muhlenberg College in January 2023 after she posted a poem by Remi Kanazi on her Instagram account. The poem calls for the shaming of those with Zionist views, which is described as a genocidal and fascist ideology in the same poem. After considering the social media post, the university administration decided that Finkelstein had violated policies regarding non-discrimination and suspended her. She was subsequently fired in May but made the story public in September 2024. Professor Finkelstein has appealed the termination decision and is currently waiting for the result from that process.
Ruha Benjamin is the Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of African American studies at Princeton University and the recent recipient of the 2024 MacArthur Fellowship, also known as the “genius grant”.[2] In contrast to Franke and Finkelstein, Benjamin is under investigation from her school for alleged involvement in a protest on campus. The protest in question was a sit-in organized by Princeton University students at which Benjamin was one of four faculty observers who were there at the request of the students.[3] In an interview dated October 4, 2024, Benjamin said that all four of the faculty observers are currently under investigation for potentially having violated Title VI of the federal anti-discrimination law. Based on their observations, the four faculty members wrote a statement after the sit-in, which contradicted the administration’s account of the events. Currently, the university is investigating the exact role she played in the protest, but Professor Benjamin says the university’s assumption is that she incited the protest by letting students into Clio Hall, where the sit-in happened.
A recent addition to the wave of universities investigating and sanctioning faculty members over Israel/Palestine is The New School. On October 31, 2024, The New School's Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (TNS-FJP) released a statement announcing that two professors and one staff member had been sanctioned by the university for their participation in a protest. The sanctions include up to three months of suspension without pay. The two professors are Jaskiran Dhillon, Associate Professor of Global Studies at the School of Public Engagement, and Abou Farman, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the New School for Social Research. The staff member wished to remain unnamed for fear of retribution. In the letter, TNS-FJP have mentioned that others are also currently under disciplinary investigation for protesting the same event.
Drawing attention to the anti-war roots of the New School, as well as its self-proclaimed commitment to progressive scholarship centered around social justice, the faculty members stated that the current actions of the university are gross violations of these values. They argued that the actions of the administration constitute acts of “political repression” that infringe upon the academic freedom of its community members, restricting their right to protest as well as hindering their adoption of “anti-racist and decolonial pedagogies” in the classroom. The statement ends with demands from the school to drop the ongoing investigations against all university members for their pro-Palestine views and activities, as well as the revision of the school’s policies on protest activity to align with the recommendations of the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of assembly and association.
The protest in question was against an event that took place on March 6, 2024, in which an active-duty Lieutenant from the “terrorism unit” of the Israeli Defense Forces was invited as speaker by the New School chapter of Hillel. On March 9, 2024, the office of the Interim President Shalala released a statement claiming that protestors “engaged in unacceptable and aggressive behaviors that limited the ability of community members to congregate peacefully”. She also said the school would be investigating potential acts of discrimination related to the protestors’ actions.
TNS-FJP painted a radically different image of the events, accusing the administration of misrepresenting the facts. In their statement dated March 8, they argued that entrance to the building or the room in which the event was going to be held was never blocked during the demonstrations. They said that it was members of Hillel that were being violent, pushing and shoving protestors, or otherwise threatening them with violence. Furthermore, they stated that the NYPD was called to campus by a student, but they subsequently assessed that there was no reason to intervene. Due to the opaqueness of the investigation process, the exact behavior that led to disciplinary action is not public knowledge and the process related to the sanctioning decision is unclear.
The then-Interim President, Donna Shalala, ended the March 9 statement by expressing the priority they place on the physical safety of all New School community members, including faculty, students and staff. About 2 months later, she called the police to have students that were encamped in the University Center and the Parsons School of Design arrested. On May 3, 2024, more than 40 students were arrested on campus after they were repeatedly assured by the administration that police would not be called on to campus during negotiations. After that, police presence on and near campus became more and more frequent. Although the school currently has a new president, Joel Towers, the school’s approach to student and faculty protests does not seem to become more accommodative. When pro-Palestine protests are set to happen near the schools, students frequently receive emails notifying them of additional “temporary” security measures which include ID-checks that are carried out by private security personnel outside of buildings, often leading to significant disruption in class schedules. In addition, The Board of Trustees has indefinitely postponed the divestment vote they had initially scheduled for June 14.
One major factor contributing to increased pressure on faculty and students with pro-Palestinian views is political. Since Spring 2024, many university presidents have been called to testify in front of the House Education and the Workforce Committee. In these hearings, university presidents have been criticized by especially Republican representatives for not cracking down on pro-Palestinian views and protests, which they tend to equate to acts or expressions of “antisemitism”. So far, presidents of universities like Harvard, University of Pennsylvania and Columbia have resigned. With Donald Trump having won the 2024 election, similar attacks on higher education and academic freedom are very likely to increase.
ESW condemns the ongoing wave of administrative investigations and sanctions that have been directed at faculty members for expressing pro-Palestinian views and taking part in student-led protests. We further condemn the political pressure placed on higher education institutions. At a moment before the likely multiplication of attacks on freedom of speech in higher education, universities cannot afford to weaken their own commitment to academic freedom of their members. We call on the global community dedicated to upholding human rights to join our call.
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