Tenured US professor fired over pro-Palestinian protests contests dismissal

A tenured professor at San José State University in California is fighting for her job after the university fired her last month over her pro-Palestinian activism – the first tenured faculty member fired from a public university in connection to campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.

Sang Hea Kil, a longtime member of the university’s justice studies department and a faculty adviser for its students for justice in Palestine chapter, is the latest in a growing list of university professors and staff who have been suspended, investigated, and in some cases dismissed or forced out in connection to the wave of pro-Palestinian protests that swept US campuses in the first year of Israel’s war in Gaza.

Kil, who is contesting her dismissal, was the second tenured faculty member dismissed from a US public university over pro-Palestinian activism after Steven Salaita, who was fired in 2014 from the University of Illinois over a series of social media posts critical of Israel’s bombing of Gaza that year. Maura Finkelstein, another tenured professor, was fired from Muhlenberg College, a private liberal arts college, following her criticism of Israel’s most recent war in Gaza, while Katherine Franke, a Columbia University law professor and longtime advocate for Palestinian rights was forced out amidst what she called a “toxic and hostile environment for legitimate debate around the war in Israel and Palestine”.

Kil’s firing adds to mounting concerns about academic freedom and campus free speech at a time when universities are facing unprecedented pressure from the Trump administration – but her case also raises questions about faculty’s free speech rights when engaged in so called “extramural” speech outside the classroom.

Sang Hea Kil. Photograph: Sang Hea Kil

The university’s case against Kil stems from a confrontation involving students and a faculty member at a tense February 2024 protest on campus, which she attended. The university also accused Kil of making remarks at a different event that it said encouraged students to stage an encampment in violation of university policy, as well as of eventually participating in such a student-led encampment.

In the first incident, Kil was present during an altercation that became physical between student protesters and a faculty member who was filming them. The university launched an investigation into Kil’s participation in the protest two months later, maintaining that she had “disrupted the university’s business operations and encouraged students to do the same”.

Kil said that she was at the protest in a personal capacity. She said that the other faculty member – who was briefly suspended but later reinstated – had “assaulted” a student.

She also said she joined the student encampment in part after similar ones in other cities were raided by police, leading to dozens of arrests. “A lot of my work is critical of policing, and I felt, because of what happened in New York and Los Angeles, obliged to camp with them,” Kil told the Guardian. She stayed at the encampment for three of the 10 days it lasted.

A spokesperson for San José State University declined to comment on “personnel matters”. The California Faculty Association, which is representing Kil as she seeks reinstatement through arbitration, said in a statement that it was “outraged” at her dismissal. “You can’t fire people for their beliefs and expression,” said V Jesse Smith, a union representative. “It’s an infringement on free speech and academic freedom, and as a faculty union, we cannot let this happen.” Kil said she planned to sue the university should the arbitration fail.

“All faculty should be able to protest all genocides without targeted punitive actions,” she said at her public appeal hearing, during which she described the university’s actions against her as “New McCarthyism, where geopolitical interests interfere with constitutional rights and academic freedom on campuses across the nation and on this campus.”

Last June, following an investigation, the university informed Kil that it would dismiss her over alleged violations of university policies, including “time, manner and place” restrictions intended to restrict protests. A faculty committee that reviewed the dismissal confirmed some of the allegations that Kil had violated university policy but concluded that the dismissal was disproportionate and not justified, according to internal documents reviewed by the Guardian.

But the university president, Cynthia Teniente-Matson upheld Kil’s dismissal despite the review and rebukes from the American Association of University Professors, Middle East Studies Association and California Scholars for Academic Freedom, among other groups. In a November letter, Teniente-Matson accused Kil of putting “the education and physical safety of our students at serious risk” and of doing so “with intentional disregard for University policies, policies of which you were aware but also that you committed to follow when taking up the position of advisor to a student organization”.

Henry Reichman, a retired professor at California State University, East Bay and leading expert on academic freedom, testified on behalf of Kil at a public hearing appealing her termination.

Reichman said that while Kil may have violated university policy, the dismissal was unwarranted because the violations did not impact her “fitness” to do her job – the standard held by groups like the AAUP with regards to faculty conduct.

“You dismiss tenured professors for things like, the professor sexually assaulted a student, or the professor didn’t show up in class for five weeks in a row with no excuse,” he said. “None of this goes to her fitness to do the job for which she was hired.”