Anthropologist Maura Finkelstein had always incorporated Palestine in her university teaching and felt that, as an anti-Zionist, Jewish American academic, it was her moral obligation to do so. She knew well the type of repression and harassment that Palestinian academics experienced at US universities, but thought that being a Jewish scholar would likely protect her. Absurdly, Maura became the first tenured American academic to be fired for allegedly making Jewish students at the Muhlenberg College campus feel unsafe due to the “antisemitic” content of her coursework and social media posts.
As Israel’s genocidal war on Palestine began escalating, academia was one of the earliest industries to start collaborating with governments and other powerful institutions to bring pro-Palestinian faculty, students and staff to heel. Repression, sanctions, harassment and censorship of pro-Palestinian sentiment is being normalized everyday.
From the outside, these efforts on behalf of academic institutions appear like a chaotic barrage of intersecting events, but Maura reveals the shocking levels of sustained coordination required for the harassment to result in punitive action such as suspensions and terminations. For example, the Muhlenberg chapter of Hillel International, which was involved in attacking Maura, is directly connected to Israel and to the Israeli Defense Forces. The board of trustees and many high-level administrators also boast ties to Israel. Additionally, powerful Zionist organizations like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) play instrumental roles in influencing policy and actions on American campuses.
For two years, Maura has been put through the wringer and experienced the full might of these repressive entities. It started when Maura received what she calls a “completely monstrous email” sent by the college president to a campus-wide listserv. The president condemned the October 7th attacks and insisted that “now is not the time to think about history, now is just the time to mourn Israel.” Maura replied with an email corrective to that same campus-wide listserve. Within a few days, a student complained about her Palestine-focused readings in the classroom. That is all it took - one complaint and one email - to rapidly activate an entire campus surveillance network: Attacks on her snowballed; complaints multiplied; entire Whatsapp groups were created with pro-Israel students monitoring her every move, both in person and on social media platforms. Soon there were warnings from administrators, then a suspension, then an investigation. Finally, Maura was fired.
Recently, it has become evident that academia has been very quick to cede authority to these malevolent, coercive forces. This has caught many by surprise, as American universities have historically projected a faith in progressive, liberal values with missions to uphold academic freedom, increase diversity and speak out in the name of human rights.
What is wrong with academia, we both wonder? Maura accepts that most academics are trying to hold onto their jobs in a horrible economy, and refusing to engage in this resounding moral challenge of our time is, alas, the easiest way to keep getting a paycheck. Yet, she is also enraged because she does not see the point of holding on to our vocations if “we can't actually be committed to the theoretical and ethical claims that we make in our work.” It is this silence, and this inability to commit to an ethical stance, that is “part of the reason that academia has been so easily dismantled over the past few years.”
“I think everyone who has ever written anything or taught anything that had the word ‘liberation’ or ‘decolonization’ or whatever…everyone who's done that and hasn't said anything about Gaza, then none of your work matters. It doesn't mean anything.”
“It sucks to get fired,” she admits. “We work most of our adult life to get to this position. But also, it's a small thing to give up when everyday I'm watching Palestinians in Gaza who've lost everything.”
Maura’s resolve has only strengthened since her firing from Muhlenberg, and she plans to continue speaking out against the genocide while learning how to sharpen her activism for Palestine through work with The Sameer Project on fundraising for Gaza.
Further reading
The Jewish supremacy at the heart of the Zionist project by Maura Finkelstein, Mondoweiss https://mondoweiss.net/2025/06/the-jewish-supremacy-at-the-heart-of-the-zionist-project/
Follow Maura Finkelstein’s substack
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