Anti-Israel Stunts From College Faculty Are NOT Expressions of "Academic Freedom"

Antisemitism shouldn't be allowed on campus, and neither should these "educators"

Photo by Chenwei Yao on Unsplash

I normally don’t do line-by-line takedowns of articles I disagree with, but this one is too good to resist. The New York Times recently published a feature titled “Professors in Trouble Over Protests Wonder if Academic Freedom Is Dying.” The piece lists various anti-Israel actions that faculty members (several Jewish, because we all know what a novelty it is to have some self-hating Jews featured in such an article) at different colleges and universities took during the Israel-Hamas War. The NYT couches what they did under the heading of “freedom of expression” instead of calling it for what it is: attempts at the anti-Zionism loophole.

Article’s original words are in italics below, my responses in bold.

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Maura Finkelstein, an anthropology professor at Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania, was an avid poster on social media. She called a fund-raiser for the Israeli war effort “students raising money for genocide,” and she frequently ended her posts with the words “Free Palestine.” Did Professor Finkelstein stop to think about how her words may have affected some of her Jewish/Israeli students and colleagues mourning the worst event for Jews since the Holocaust as she used her ‘Jew card’ in this manner?

After complaints, federal civil rights investigators and the college began looking into her online postings and classroom discussions about the war in Gaza. Good. What came of this, I wonder?

But it was her sharing of an Instagram post by a Palestinian American poet, Remi Kanazi, that got her fired, Dr. Finkelstein said. “Do not cower to Zionists,” the post said. “Don’t normalize Zionists taking up space.” In this case, it would be 100% appropriate to replace the word ‘Zionist’ with the word ‘Jew.’ Would this type of language be acceptable to refer to any other minority on a college campus, even if it was endorsed by a member of that same minority?

A student complained that the post made her feel unsafe, as a Zionist and as a Jew. “She said she wouldn’t feel comfortable in my classes,” Dr. Finkelstein said in an interview. Please keep in mind that these are faculty who claim to support students who feel “unsafe” when someone calls them by the wrong pronoun. And yet…

As protests unfolded at scores of college campuses last spring, students were not the only ones punished for participating. Faculty members also faced consequences for supporting the students in their protests or for expressing views that were construed as antisemitic or, less commonly, for pro-Israel activism. Really? What kind of consequences did they face? From what I saw at Columbia, not much. Maybe it’s different at other schools, though (and l hope it was).

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has intensified what many faculty members and their allies believe is part of a growing assault on the ideals of academic freedom, a principle that most American colleges and universities hold dear. Oh really? Do they uphold the principle to condemn, say, violence against women by certain ISIS-branded organizations that continues to occur globally as we speak? That to me would be a relevant avenue of scholarly inquiry from faculty concerned about ‘the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.’ So far I haven’t seen anything like that from these supposed “feminists” who support “academic freedom.”

Visiting scholars, adjuncts and lecturers without tenure have had their contracts terminated or not renewed. Some had their classes suddenly canceled. Faculty members say they have been publicly criticized in ways that have trampled on their reputations and hurt their careers. Adjuncts, visiting scholars, and lecturers are by definition term-by-term employees with no job security. There’s certainly much to be said about the “adjunctification” of higher education, a topic that no doubt deserves its own article. But a lack of “freedom of expression” is hardly those employees’ #1 problem.

Faculty members have been affected at more than a dozen major universities, according to unofficial records being kept by faculty union activists. Attempts to discipline scholars have been rising, to 145 a year in 2022, from four a year in 2000, as education has become more polarized, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a nonprofit that monitors free speech violations. “There’s a chill in the air,” said Peter Lake, a law professor and director of the Center for Excellence in Higher Education Law and Policy at Stetson University in Florida. Yeah well, generally when you openly voice views that marginalize Jews while also tacitly supporting international terrorist organizations, a “chill in the air” would be a reasonable thing to expect at the very least.

The disciplinary actions have followed a movement to ensure that students feel safe on campus. In the last year, many Jewish students have said protests and classroom discussions about the war have threatened that feeling of safety, sometimes intimidating them from expressing their views and making them nervous about revealing their Jewish identity. For many years, “feeling safe” at these particular campuses had more to do with not accidentally uttering a microaggression and being careful not to misgender people. Now that Jewish students express genuine concern for their safety, this concept becomes secondary? By the way, much of the modern “social justice” scholarship being inflicted on students at these universities revolves around identity and lived experience. Ideally this would mean that all minorities, including Jews, should feel safe “revealing their identity” in an academic setting, right?

Academic freedom is also not absolute. It does not protect “propagating wrongheaded ideas” in teaching or research, said Nadine Strossen, a former head of the American Civil Liberties Union. And it does not put faculty members above the law or above campus rules meant to make sure protests, whatever their point of view, do not disrupt learning. But it means that academics are broadly allowed the First Amendment right to express opinions or to speak beyond their area of expertise outside the classroom, including on social media. “Academic freedom” doesn’t mean what most people think it means. First of all, “academic freedom” is not protected under the First Amendment, and there really are no First Amendment rights on private college campuses at all beyond what the administration allows. The tenure system, which is quickly becoming obsolete, was created to promote academic freedom in the form of job protections for senior faculty, so they could express certain views and not get fired for it. Now, regular people just view the tenure system as a way to make it impossible to fire underperforming, old, and/or delusional faculty members.

Yet that is where many faculty members are getting into trouble, Ms. Strossen said. Professors have been criticized for creating hostile environments in classrooms and stifling the speech of students who might not agree with them, taking on the role of activists instead of teachers. And some say faculty members are professing views that could cross legal lines requiring universities to protect students from discrimination. If this paragraph were about any other minority—”some faculty members are professing pro-segregationist views about overturning the Civil Rights Act of 1964, creating a hostile environment for certain students”—how would this even be a controversial issue at all?

Much of the pressure to crack down on faculty has come from external sources, including alumni, lawmakers, advocacy groups and donors. “Those external voices are something that any president who wants to keep their job has to pay some attention to,” Alison Byerly, the president of Carleton College in Minnesota, said. This is a thinly-veiled “Jews control the institutions with their money” argument.

In hearings on antisemitism on campuses last school year, congressional Republicans zeroed in on several professors, urging universities to discipline or fire them over speech or writing they said was hateful. When Columbia’s president, Nemat Shafik, testified, Representative Elise Stefanik of New York singled out Mohamed Abdou, an assistant visiting professor. Ms. Stefanik quoted from one of his posts on Facebook, under a different spelling of his name, supporting Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad four days after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. “What are the consequences in this case?” Ms. Stefanik asked. “He will never work at Columbia again,” Dr. Shafik replied. Dr. Shafik didn’t really give the whole story here, so I’ll fill in the blanks. Columbia hired Dr. Abdou on a 1-year teaching contract, which is temporary by definition and very common at American universities. Obviously we can question why they ever hired this cretin in the first place (but I think we all know the answer to that). One-year contracts can sometimes be renewed for another academic year if the university is pleased with how the instructor performed and the department has the funding. I think it’s obvious to anyone with eyes and ears that this professor could not have his contract renewed. So Columbia allowed him to stay through the Spring semester (and thus finish out his contract), and then sent him on his merry way.

Dr. Abdou’s contract was not renewed, and he is suing Dr. Shafik and the university for defamation and “loss of academic freedom,” among other complaints. He said he had been quoted incompletely, noting that his full post said that he supported Hamas and its allies “up to a point — given ultimate differences over our ethical political commitments.” This guy has no case. Even if those were the (valid) reasons his contract was not renewed, they didn’t have to give him one. “We can’t renew your 1-year contract” would be sufficient enough of an explanation. Had they fired him mid-year, it would be a different story.

By condemning him, Dr. Shafik “blacklisted me globally and tarnished my scholarship,” he said in an interview. No. HE blacklisted HIMSELF with his pathetic excuse for “scholarship.” But not exactly “globally” — he could always apply for a position at U of Tehran.

The university recently barred from campus a vocally pro-Israel assistant professor in its business school, Shai Davidai, saying he had harassed and intimidated university employees. The professor has accused the university of not doing enough to limit pro-Palestinian activism that he says veers into antisemitism. He got banned from campus while Khymani “Zionists don’t deserve to live” James, Joseph “October 7th was awesome” Massad, and Katherine “all ex-IDF soldiers should be banned” Franke all remain. Anyone else see a problem here?

Dr. Finkelstein argues that if there was any antisemitism at work in her case, it came from Muhlenberg College, not her. “Once the administration called me into meetings, I realized that I had thought being Jewish was going to protect me, and it didn’t,” Dr. Finkelstein recalled. “So I am being told that there are good Jews and bad Jews and Jews that count and Jews that don’t, which is inherently antisemitic.” She was fired on May 30, and she is appealing. I had to read the sentences above multiple times to make sure I was getting them right. In this deranged academic’s mind, she is one of the “good Jews” who dutifully spread the JVP gospel, and the evil Zionists interfered with her mission. This is a woman who publicly expresses support for the actions of a jihadi enemy that uses rape as a weapon of war, calls other Jews victimized by terrorists the perpetrators of genocide, and has zero awareness of how these actions affect others—many her own students—at her workplace. Yet she calls her (now former) employer “antisemitic” for firing her?

NEWSFLASH: there’s no such thing as “good Jews” or “bad Jews.” Regardless of our differences, ALL of us would have been shoved together inside the same box cars en route to the same kamps were this Germany in 1941 instead of the United States in 2024. This lady needs to look in a mirror—and now that she’s unemployed she’ll have plenty of time to do it.

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I don’t have the stomach to comment on the rest of this article. The only positive conclusion I can draw from it is that Dr. Finkelstein faced actual consequences, unlike similar faculty at places like Columbia. It gives me hope that at least some institutions are actually enforcing their codes of conduct.