University professors and lecturers in the US, the UK, Germany and worldwide have been censored, sanctioned and fired for speaking out to condemn Israel’s ongoing invasion and ethnic cleansing of the Gaza strip, which has killed over 35,000 Palestinians to date. CNN reports that over 2400 students and dozens of professors have been arrested across the USA for taking part in ongoing campus protests. Jewish and Palestinian professors are among those detained. Economics professor Caroline Fohlin was knocked to the ground and physically subdued in Atlanta, while professors Annelise Orleck and Steve Tamari, both 65, were also knocked to the ground, suffering broken ribs and whiplash in New Hampshire and St Louis respectively.
Recent weeks have seen extensive repression in response to an ongoing wave of student-led protests on university campuses. There have been over 280 detentions of students at Columbia University and City of New York campuses alone, and similar police action in many countries worldwide. Professors at Columbia, where the wave of student-led protests started, have been censured by Congress after producing opinion pieces and essays condemning Israel’s invasion, supporting the protesters, or stating their support for Hamas. Hundreds of faculty members walked out of the university in solidarity with the students, who set up tents in encampments on campus, inspiring similar demonstrations across the globe. Elsewhere, professors have intervened when police have arrested students or tried to dismantle encampments, they have also signed letters to administrators complaining about their co-operation with the police, and taken part in mass walk-outs in order to show their support for the protesting students.
Richard Heyman, a professor at the University of Austin, was fired from his position after confronting police at a Texas protest inspired by the Columbia demonstrations, telling police: “You don’t belong here.”
Numerous professors and lecturers have been suspended at other US institutions in the months since Hamas’s 7 October attack on southern Israel, including the suspension of two faculty members at the university of Arizona. Professor Kareem Tannous, an employee at a private Catholic university in the USA, lost his job over social media messages he posted on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. Professor Tannous lost his anti-discrimination case, but in recent months a UK sociology professor, David Miller, won a legal challenge after being wrongfully dismissed over 2019 comments in which he described Zionist ideology as contributing to Islamophobia. In Germany in particular, professors expressing solidarity with Palestine have lost work and seen job offers rescinded.
The detentions form part of a broader conflict over political activity, activism and in particular solidarity with the Palestinian cause on US and global university campuses. Dr Isaac Kamola, director of the American Association of University Professors’ Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom, told CNN: “You don’t see the moments that are more subtle, of faculty being removed from teaching, being sanctioned without due process… There’s been a normalisation of having cops on campus.”
More than half of Gaza’s homes have been damaged, along with a reported 73% of school buildings. Numerous prominent Palestinian lecturers and educators have been killed in air strikes, including a reported 94 professors, along with hundreds of teachers and thousands of students, it was reported by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor in January of this year. Israeli forces are accused of deliberately targeting academic, scientific and intellectual figures in the besieged Strip.
