ST. LOUIS — Five of the nine suspended Washington University professors and employees spoke out Sunday afternoon. This comes one day before graduation.
They said they were suspended and some were arrested for standing with students during the pro-Palestinian protests on campus a little more than two weeks ago.
They claim they've had no due process.
“We haven't heard anything from the university. No formal charges, no sign of any investigation, no sign of evidence to back up the allegations made in the letters we received, absolute silence. Of course, we all are pursuing our own collective measures of redress, which include potential legal action,” WashU anthropology professor Bret Gustafson said.
Attorney and SLU Law professor Anders Walker said these professors really don't have a good case against the university, legally.
“They actually do not. Universities are not free speech zones, and the university can do pretty much whatever it wants,” Walker said.
He said tenure won't protect them either.
“Professors under tenure policies can generally write what they want to write and say what they want to say. But they can't say everything. And if the university decides that they're disrupting life on campus, or trespassing, or causing harm, then they can be suspended, or even terminated,” Walker said.
Gustafson said the continued actions of the university pushed them to speak.
“A few days ago, the faculty senate called a special meeting to hear from the Chancellor and his lieutenants. Unfortunately, in that meeting, all we heard were misrepresentations of the events. So today, we're trying to set the record straight,” Gustafson said.
WashU lecturer Scott Ross said the administration continues to claim the protests were violent, which he said can’t be further from the truth.
“Another justification for the mass arrest and subsequent suspensions that administrators keep repeating is the ‘bad d intentions and violence’ of the protest and allege protesters surrounded Olin library, which was news to me. What I saw that day was a demonstration that stopped near one of three entrances to the library but blocked none. A demonstration that was loud, yes, but brief,” Ross said.
Ross said the Washington University Police were the aggressors.
“It was peaceful until WUPD brought violence. Now toward the end of the faculty senate meeting, Chancellor Martin essentially admitted that the whole justification for arrests was the presence of tents,” Ross said.
WashU senior lecturer in architecture Micahel Allen said they are facing injustice.
“Let us look at the arrests and suspensions happening here and around the country, as well as the devastating police violence in the context of a dangerous trend in the United States of America toward an alignment of the super wealthy institutions of higher learning and the state. This alignment aims to disempower discourage and attack anyone who stands in the way,” Allen said.
As a Jew and lecturer in anthropology, Aaron Neiman said by supporting Palestine, he is not rejecting Jewish values but rejecting genocide.
“I reject any implication that the speech or actions of our movement are anti-Semitic. In fact, I see this claim as a dangerous negation of Jewish identity,” Neiman said.
5 On Your Side’s Laura Barczewski asked all of the professors, “What do you say to the Jewish students who feel unsafe and are struggling with how this is unfolding?”
“What we're really trying to highlight here is that actually represents the very, very small minority of opinions on campus of other Jewish students or Jewish faculty,” Neiman said.
WashU professor of art history and archaeology Angela Miller said, “A lot of the movement nationally in support of Palestine is Jewish students. They've been at the frontlines of this protest from the very beginning. So the idea that Jewish students on our campus are not safe is again a fabrication of the administration."
Jewish students at WashU and Rabbis who support them have said in multiple interviews with 5 On Your Side the protests have made them feel unsafe.
“I'm afraid for other people, for the other students, for my friends who are also themselves afraid,” WashU student Aron Goodman said.
Another student, Charlie Weingarten, said these protests make her feel emotionally unsafe.
Looking out on the sea of individuals with these signs calling for the mass murder of Jews, whether or not they're aware of it was like, there's not a word, if there was a word stronger than terrifying, I would use it,” Weingarten said.
Several of the professors who spoke out say they do want to have a dialogue with the university because many of them want to return to their jobs and they're not done working for their students.
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