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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.”
After complaints, federal civil rights investigators and the college began looking into her online postings and classroom discussions about the war in Gaza.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. 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.”
By condemning him, Dr. Shafik “blacklisted me globally and tarnished my scholarship,” he said in an interview.
(Dr. Shafik resigned over the summer, after losing the support of many members of the faculty, who criticized her in a no-confidence vote for ignoring “our statutes and our norms of academic freedom and shared governance.”)
Columbia declined to comment on Dr. Abdou’s case because it is in litigation.
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.
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.
In a separate investigation, the Education Department’s civil rights arm reached an agreement with Muhlenberg in September to resolve complaints including that Dr. Finkelstein had created a hostile environment for Jews — in violation of civil rights law — and that the college had not taken enough corrective action. A spokesman for the college, Todd Lineburger, said it was “steadfastly devoted to principles of academic freedom, tenure and due process.”
Dr. Finkelstein, who was the chair of sociology and anthropology, is the only tenured professor known to have been dismissed on the basis of speech or conduct related to the war in Gaza, according to Anita Levy, senior program officer for academic freedom of the American Association of University Professors, which will conduct an inquiry into her case.
The most vulnerable faculty members are those on the lower end of the totem pole, without tenure.
At the University of California, Los Angeles, another hot spot during the protests last spring, several faculty members, including two tenured professors, two on the tenure track, eight lecturers and one adjunct, faced criminal charges and internal disciplinary proceedings for their participation in campus protests, according to faculty members involved.
Graeme Blair, an associate professor of political science who was arrested at the U.C.L.A. encampment, said he believed that he had lost a promotion to full professor for standing by students during a violent confrontation with the police.
“I think they are trying to send a message,” Dr. Blair said.
U.C.L.A. said it supported academic freedom but could not comment on individual conduct cases.
A smaller number of cases have involved pro-Israel instructors and faculty members.
In many cases, however, the pressure to crack down on faculty speech has illustrated the enduring power of the tenure system.
Raz Segal, an associate professor of Holocaust and genocide studies, believes he lost a job offer to direct a Holocaust and genocide center at the University of Minnesota because a pro-Israel group lobbied against him for calling Israel’s conduct of the war “a textbook case of genocide.”
Dr. Segal remains in his tenured position at Stockton University, a public university in southern New Jersey.
Annelise Orleck, a history professor at Dartmouth, was arrested while recording a student protest on her phone and was barred from central areas of campus, including the president’s house.
For weeks she dodged through backyards on her way to class to avoid the block where the president’s house is, she said. Now the charges have been dropped and the ban lifted, but she still avoids the Green, where she was arrested.
Justin Anderson, a spokesman for Dartmouth, said that the university had an “unwavering commitment” to academic freedom.
Dr. Orleck said she felt fortunate, compared with colleagues elsewhere. “I feel like a lot of my colleagues this fall are being caught up in a new wave of repression, and so far, I have not,” she said.
Susan C. Beachy, Kirsten Noyes and Kitty Bennett contributed research.
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