Support Dan Shaw and Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda Summarily Fired by CUNY for Saying Palestine
Professor Danny Shaw, a popular adjunct lecturer at John Jay College at the City University of New York (CUNY), has been fired by college president Karol Mason in what appears to be a clear case of retaliation for his outspoken public stand against genocide and for Palestinian liberation. On March 20, the chair of Latin American and Latinx Studies at John Jay College was informed that Mason had intervened directly to block approval of Shaw’s summer and fall 2024 reappointments, violating the principles of departmental autonomy and academic freedom. Mason’s intervention panders to a coordinated pressure campaign from rightwing zionists who were angered by Professor Shaw’s social media accounts. Shaw has been teaching at John Jay College since 2007. He has excellent peer reviews, positive evaluations from thousands of students, and was informed in December that he had been nominated for a prestigious teaching award. Shaw’s firing is at least the second retaliatory non-reappointment of CUNY adjuncts for pro-Palestine speech in the past year after Hunter College fired adjunct lecturer Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda last fall for posting in support of Palestine liberation on her private social media.
These firings cheat CUNY students of their right to access diverse perspectives, create a hostile workplace environment for faculty and staff, and pose a grave threat to academic freedom.
We condemn these retaliatory firings and demand that the teaching appointments of Professors Shaw and Hofmann-Kuroda be immediately reinstated.
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Both of these firings are part of a well-documented campaign of repression by CUNY management against faculty, staff, and students who organize against genocide and for Palestine liberation. Notable incidents include:
- John Jay president Mason’s last-minute cancellation of the Palestine Lives conference in May 2022
- The Hunter College administration’s attempt to ban Palestinian activist and CUNY alumna Nerdeen Kiswani from attending a student-run event about Palestine in May 2023 where she was the invited speaker
- The CUNY Board of Trustees June 2023 defamation of CUNY Law graduate Fatima Mohammad for her pro-Palestine commencement speech
- Brooklyn College president Michelle Anderson’s decision to move a pro-Palestine student demonstration off campus in October 2023
- CUNY Law School administration’s decision to last-minute cancel a pro-Palestine student-run event in November 2023
- Queens College president Frank Wu’s decision to report the Muslim Student Association to the NYPD over a pro-Palestine social media post in November 2023
- Hunter College interim president Ann Kirschner’s decision to cancel a screening of a film critical of Israeli policies, the same morning it was scheduled to take place in November 2023
Please sign petition @ this link.
Through these and numerous other actions, CUNY college presidents, the CUNY central administration, and the CUNY Board of Trustees have shown their emphatic and direct support for US-Israeli settler colonial violence against the Palestinian people and are trying to silence those in the CUNY community who protest this violence.
We call for CUNY to divest from settler colonialism, apartheid, and state-sponsored terrorism, and we stand with all CUNY workers and students who continue to speak out for Palestine liberation.
An injury to one is an injury to all.
CUNY for Palestine
April 1, 2024
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