Maura Finkelstein was terminated from Muhlenberg College following a pressure campaign that seized on an anti-Zionist Instagram repost.

In late May, however, Muhlenberg told Finkelstein that she was fired. The reason? She had shared, on her personal Instagram account, in a temporary story slide, a post written not by herself but by Palestinian poet Remi Kanazi calling for the shunning of Zionist ideology and its supporters.

“Do not cower to Zionists,” Kanazi wrote on January 16. “Shame them. Do not welcome them in your spaces. Why should these genocide loving fascists be treated any different than any other flat out racist.” At the time, Israel had already killed over 22,000 Palestinians in Gaza, the majority of whom were women and children.

For Finkelstein’s repost of Kanazi’s words, the college determined that their employee of nine years had violated its equal opportunity and nondiscrimination policies.

  • InevitableSwing [none/use name]
    ·
    2 months ago

    Emphasis mine. Being anti-genocide is bad and can cost your tenured job. But being pro-genocide is okay.

    Another key moment in Finkelstein's tensions with the college in the previous 11 months [was] her reaction to a fundraising campaign for the Israeli military promoted on campus. Finkelstein told me that on October 17, on leaving her classroom, she was shocked by a display table newly laid out by Hillel.

    "You can help raise money for various war efforts in Israel," a sign on the table read, followed by QR codes linking to campaigns, including one to raise money for the Israeli military. Finkelstein did not immediately post publicly about the fundraiser, but emailed the school's president, chaplain, and director of Hillel.

    "How, in good conscience, can the college allow for this to be displayed to our students? The Israeli military just bombed a hospital in Gaza, killing 500 people," she wrote. "I think this is an absolute disgrace. I hope it will be taken down ASAP." Following several complaints to university leadership, Finkelstein was, she said, told that the Hillel students had a right to fundraise for whichever cause they wanted.

    "I asked if, since students had the right to fundraise for genocide, whether I or anyone else — other faculty, students — had the freedom to write about it, and was told yes," said Finkelstein. The following day, she posted a picture of the fundraiser sign to her X and Instagram accounts, without naming Muhlenberg as the location. "Students raising money for genocide," she wrote. "Grief won't be extinguished by revenge — ceasefire now."

    I don't know anything about academia and maybe this is typical for it. Still my response is holy fuck. I'm shocked that the uni used outside consultants as a PR heat shield and any uni can cherry pick a firm that will give them the result they want.

    While Finkelstein was put on leave, the third-party investigation into the case was conducted by D. Stafford & Associates, a consulting firm specializing in campus safety and law enforcement. The investigation, which concluded in April, found that Finkelstein's Instagram repost rose to the level of violating the school's equal opportunity, nondiscrimination policies, which can police extramural speech in addition to classroom conduct.

    Finkelstein had to literally define words for the provost

    "She didn't seem to understand what I meant by Zionist," Finkelstein said, recounting her experience of an October meeting with Furge, the provost. "And so I explained to her that Judaism is a religion and Zionism is a political ideology."