In January of this year, Maura Finkelstein, a tenured associate professor at Muhlenberg College, reposted a statement from a Palestinian American poet on Instagram. Finkelstein says that, months later, a faculty and staff committee recommended firing her over that post (Inside Higher Ed)
The post read: “Do not cower to Zionists. Shame them. Do not welcome them in your spaces. Do not make them feel comfortable. Why should those genocide-loving fascists be treated any different than any other flat-out racist. Don’t normalize Zionism. Don’t normalize Zionists taking up space.”
According to Anita Levy, a senior program officer in the American Association of University Professors’ Department of Academic Freedom, Tenure and Governance, who’s advocating for Finkelstein, she was suspended from campus and teaching a week later amid alleged student complaints about both the class discussion and the Instagram repost
Finkelstein’s Instagram post wasn’t her first controversial statement on Israel. In October, a Change.org petition by “Muhlenberg College Alumni and Supporters” called for her removal. According to The Intercept, she “was the subject of a campaign of thousands of anonymous, bot-generated emails sent every minute for over 24 hours to the school’s administrators—as well as local news outlets and politicians.” It also reported that shortly before Finkelstein’s Instagram post, the provost told Finkelstein there had been a complaint referencing her filed against the college with the U.S. Education Department.
Faculty speech related to Israel and Palestine has faced heightened scrutiny since the Oct. 7 outbreak of war. With some faculty members being suspended and nontenured faculty losing their jobs, academic freedom advocates have sounded the alarm.
Speaking to Inside Higher Ed, Finkelstein, who is Jewish, said that her case sets a “terrifying precedent” for academic freedom.
“If I can be fired for criticizing a foreign government, calling attention to a genocide and using my academic expertise as an anthropologist to draw attention to how power operates, then no one is safe,” she wrote in an email. “I wasn’t fired for anything I said in the classroom. I was fired because of a charge brought by a student I had never met, let alone taught, who had been surveying my social media account for months. This isn’t about student safety, this is about silencing dissent. We are witnessing a new McCarthyism and we should all be terrified of its implications.”
Muhlenberg fired Finkelstein in May. However, Finkelstein didn’t go public until the Intercept article, which called her the first tenured professor to lose her job over pro-Palestine speech.
While she appeals the decision, Finkelstein is receiving a salary and benefits. However, she is not teaching.
Firing a tenured professor is not supposed to be an easy process. In Finkelstein’s case, a confidential panel of faculty and staff members received a lengthy investigative report, prepared by an outside party, which then recommended firing her. Levy said the panel cited only Finkelstein’s Instagram repost in determining that she was responsible for bias-related conduct. Finkelstein added that although there was a “308-page investigative report,” the panel determined the “single Instagram repost on my personal social media account was ‘chronic and pervasive’ behavior.”
In a letter, Muhlenberg college has said it “is committed to and upholds the tenets of academic freedom, tenure and due process as set forth in the [AAUP’s] 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure.” It stressed the confidential nature of the on-going case.
Since the Oct. 7 attack, concerns have been raised about scholars being punished for taking anti-zionist positions.
Levy said this is the first instance AAUP has heard of a tenured faculty member being fired for pro-Palestine or pro-Israel speech.
Graham Piro, the faculty legal defence fund fellow at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said his organization also hadn’t heard before of a tenured faculty member being fired over either pro-Palestine or pro-Israel speech.
“It’s incredibly disturbing; it does not bode well for tenure,” Piro said.
“Tenure can’t just be thrown away because the public gets angry about something an academic says,” he said.
Kristen Shahverdian, program director for campus free speech at PEN America, said, “This case is the first that we have heard of of a tenure-track professor being fired for pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli speech.”
“The principle of academic freedom is meant to afford professors protection for their public, extramural comments—even when some find what they say deeply offensive,” Shahverdian said. “Public and private colleges alike should be doubling down on protecting the academic freedom of their faculty members in this time of deepening polarization—not outright firing them for social media posts.”
Worth reading in full.
