Power & Pushback: Professor fired over Gaza protest gets job back

An arbitrator has ruled that a San Jose State University professor who lost her job over campus Gaza protests must be reinstated. Dr. Sang Hea Kil was initially suspended by the school before becoming the first tenured professor to lose her job over pro-Palestine advocacy. The school made the decision last November, rejecting recommendations and findings made by a Faculty Hearing Committee. The arbitrator who issued the ruling found that her termination was “excessive and disproportionate,” but recommended a one-month suspension due to “interference with another faculty member’s delivery of a lecture that Dr. Kil and others found objectionable and Dr. Kil’s misadvising students about a rule she could or should have known about.” In addition to the reinstatement order, the school was also instructed to provide Kil with back pay. “I feel what happened to me was to silence any pro-Palestinian solidarity in academia and also in this nation,” Kil told KQED . “I fought as hard as I possibly can with the support and solidarity of my colleagues and social justice groups. We won, and it’s a victory for academic freedom on campus and pro-Palestine speech.” Months before her suspension, while under temporary suspension, Kil spoke to Mondoweiss about her situation. “This is happening across the nation. It’s happening in private as well as public universities, as we’re seeing in the headlines,” she said . “We’re seeing an erosion of our democratic principles happening at the universities. We’re seeing administrators being the bearers of this diminishing of our constitutional rights, especially about our First Amendment. We’re seeing them use police to carry out their repression.” “It’s really alarming to me to see what’s happening on campuses not just the faculty suspensions but also the student suspensions,” Kil continued. “They’re going after students, they’re delaying their graduations because they want to protest a genocide. To me its absolutely immoral and I think that faculty need to organize with each other and we need to unite with each other because our students futures are at stake, our futures are at stake, and the University’s future is at stake unless we all band together, organize, and fight this systemic repression.” The California State University’s teachers’ union, the California Faculty Association, says this is not an isolated case and is pushing for stronger protections for union members. It’s also backing AB 2551, a legislative effort that would require the school system to include demographic data in its annual reports about student violations and set up committee hearings to evaluate such policies. Pro-Israel organizations are framing that bill as an attempt to roll back protections for Jewish students. Days after the decision was handed down, Dr. Kil announced that she was suing the school, alleging that it had violated her civil and First Amendment rights. “Our public universities have an educational mission and constitutional mandate to protect free speech, but SJSU made the cowardly choice to fire its own professor because they did not agree with her personal political views,” said Brian Olney, one of her attorneys, in a statement. “The University tried to destroy Dr. Kil’s thriving career but they cannot silence her voice.” Pro-Israel censorship in Sharon , MA The Boston chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) has put out a statement regarding allegations of Islamophobia at a suburban Massachusetts school. Earlier this month, a Jewish history teacher in Sharon, Massachusetts showed her class a video, in which a Palestinian father and his daughter are forced to navigate checkpoints amid resource scarcity and another depicting an IDF soldier with PTSD. Two parents complained that the lesson was antisemitic, and the School Committee backed them up. The teacher was forced to cancel the remaining part of the unit and was temporarily replaced by a more “balanced” administrator. The School Committee also voted to vet the teacher’s curriculum for “anti-Semitic content.” JVP says that there was an “outpouring ” of Islamophobic and antisemitic hate toward teachers and community members following the incident. The teacher who was targeted was called a “self-hating Jew” and subjected to threats of sexual abuse and death. “These incidents are just the latest in a long pattern of Islamophobia by members of the Sharon Public Schools community,” notes JVP Boston. “Muslim students and community members have experienced the last-minute cancellation of Eid observations, hijabi speakers, and events supporting hijabi students. Muslim voices have been repeatedly questioned, marginalized, and falsely accused. Palestinian history and perspectives are facing removal from the curriculum. Members of the School Committee continue to wield their power to reinforce discrimination and repression.” In 2021 , Sharon became the first Massachusetts town to adopt the controversial IHRA definition of antisemitism, which equates some criticisms of Israel with antisemitism. Further Reading +972: The plot against Palestine Action Electronic Intifada: Palestine Action ban births new direct action groups Reuters: DOJ probes coffee shop chain in New York after it bars pro-Israel US lawmaker The Intercept: 30-Year Sentence for Transporting Zines Is a Five-Alarm Fire for Free Speech Tech Policy Press: Trump’s Crackdown on Dissent is Targeting Signal—and Zines Truthout: Trump’s Federal Lawyers Ramp Up Their Attacks on Demonstrators and the Left Israel/Palestine Mission Network: Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) General Assembly Votes to Divest from Palantir Technologies and GE Aerospace