Muhlenberg College Violated Academic Freedom in Dismissing Finkelstein

Today, the AAUP is releasing a new report, Academic Freedom and Tenure: Muhlenberg College, on the 2024 dismissal of Dr. Maura Finkelstein, a tenured associate professor and chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. The action was triggered by a January 2024 social media repost related to Zionism.

The report concludes that the administration, in initially dismissing Professor Finkelstein from the faculty solely because of one anti-Zionist repost on Instagram, acted in violation of AAUP-supported principles and standards of academic freedom and due process. It further concluded that the administration’s hasty action, facilitated by the monitoring and dissemination of Finkelstein’s social media posts by administrators, has severely impaired the climate for academic freedom at Muhlenberg College. The report also found that the college’s equal opportunity and nondiscrimination policies, developed by outside consultants, do not sufficiently protect academic freedom and due process, nor do they comport with widely accepted standards of academic governance.

The report clarifies the stakes of Professor Finkelstein’s dismissal within the national context and emphasizes the case’s importance for the broader academic community. The authors canvas the numerous faculty suspensions, removals, and dismissals that have proliferated following campus protests against the US government’s support for Israeli government actions in response to the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack. In the months following October 7, disciplinary actions against faculty members for their speech or conduct related to the war in Gaza appeared to increase at the same time that donors, legislators, and well-funded political organizations escalated demands for campus administrators to crack down on what could be said or expressed on campus. Noting that Finkelstein’s dismissal was an especially egregious case, the report cautions that it would be naive to assume that her case was unique or that it will be the last of its kind. The weight of a repressive academic environment, the report predicts, is much more likely to be felt by contingent faculty members. 

The report warns that faculty members are not the only ones at risk. President Trump’s January 2025 executive order “Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism” calls for institutions to “monitor for and report activities by alien students and staff” and for “ensuring that such reports about aliens lead, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to investigations and, if warranted, actions to remove such aliens.”

Highlighting the rapid escalation in the uses and abuses of Title VI and equal opportunity policies on campuses, the report makes several important procedural recommendations and closes by emphasizing the critical importance of sound policies and appropriate faculty oversight. 

As has become clear over the past few years, the weaponization of fears about antisemitism is a primary strategy of the right wing to divide college campuses and suppress free speech and academic freedom. The AAUP is fighting this on campuses, through our documentation and reporting, and in the courts. Our chapters on hundreds of campuses across the country are mobilizing to protect students, faculty, and the right to political dissent. And among other lawsuits we have brought to challenge the administration’s onslaught of attacks on higher ed, the national AAUP; chapters at Harvard, Rutgers, and NYU; and the Middle East Studies Association last month filed a lawsuit seeking to block the Trump administration from carrying out large-scale arrests, detentions, and deportations of noncitizen students and faculty members who participate in pro-Palestinian protests and other protected First Amendment activities.