Most classes at the City University of New York (CUNY) start next week. As a lecturer at City College, the CUNY college in Harlem that was the site of the CUNY Gaza Solidarity Encampment in 2024, I am filled with back to school excitement even as I am scrambling to finish my class preparations.
But I am also filled with sadness and anger, because one of my colleagues, known publicly as The Fired Fourth, is not returning to campus for a second school year. Students will not get to benefit from her teaching and mentorship, and colleagues will not get to benefit from her expertise and dedication to our students and to the mission of making our university truly serve the people of New York City. At the same time, the genocide in Gaza continues, as does the Israeli incursions into the West Bank. No one should be fired for speaking out against this brutality.
The Fired Four are adjunct faculty members at Brooklyn College who were fired in June 2025 after attending a student-organized protest for Palestine on the quad, which ended in police violence against peacefully marching students. PSC-CUNY, the union that represents faculty and staff at the university, and the broader CUNY community responded and built a strong movement. On every CUNY campus or protest, you will see professors wearing Fired Four t-shirts. There have been numerous protests, thousands of fliers distributed and the campaign has received support from Zohran Mamdani while he was running for mayor, DSA candidates Darializa Avila Chevalier, Claire Valdez, and Diana Moreno, as well as important academics like Marc Lamont Hill, Robin DG Kelley, and others.
As a result of the strength of the movement, three of them were reinstated beginning in the Spring 2026 semester, but one remains — and has been banned from holding any position at the university. The official charges for the Fourth’s firing are using the CUNY name on a flyer, receiving a $5 donation from a fellow faculty member — activities that generations of campus activists have engaged in with no problem whatsoever. It is clear that the university is attempting to make an example of her in an act of political repression against the Palestine movement and campus organizing in general.
In the early 1940s, CUNY purged over 50 professors accused of being communists after hearings known as the Rapp Coudert hearings. CUNY has since apologized for those purges. Importantly, the bogus charges against those professors was “conduct unbecoming” — the precise charges against the Fired Fourth. This vague claim has been used for the suspension, firing and expulsion of leftists throughout history and now, history is repeating itself and using the exact same words in this “new McCarthyism.”
But the tides are turning and it is possible to win the reinstatement of all four faculty members. Not only have three of the four been reinstated, but the movement for Palestine at CUNY won a major victory for CUNY to disclose their investments in Israel. It is essential for students and workers across the university to continue taking up the campaign for her reinstatement this fall, not only to restore her livelihood and reverse her exile from the CUNY community, but because the outcome of this case has stakes for the fight against repression around the country. This includes other students and academic workers targeted for their Palestine activism, to those fired for other political reasons such as teaching about LGBTQ+ topics, attending socialist conferences, or criticizing Charlie Kirk, to the many activists facing criminal charges for organizing against ICE.
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has organized for decades around the concept of academic freedom, which means faculty rights to intellectual freedom in teaching and research and freedom of speech and of criticism both within the university (such as criticizing administrators) and in public. If universities can get away with firing teachers for their political expression on Palestine, it creates a more repressive environment for all political speech on campus, regardless of topic, and bolsters the Trump administration’s ability to successfully bully school administrators into obeying its dictates.
Students and workers at all of CUNY’s 25 campuses have a stake in taking up the campaign. Here at the beginning of the semester, allies can help by calling or emailing the Chancellor’s office to state their support, tabling on campus to spread the word, and buying and wearing the T-shirts the Reinstate the Fired Four campaign is selling on campus to promote the cause and raise money for the campaign and for the Fourth’s living expenses.
Members of the CUNY community and other allies can learn more about the campaign at the Reinstate the Fired Fourth Instagram page.
The post The Fight to Reinstate the “Fired Fourth” CUNY Faculty Member Continues This Fall appeared first on Left Voice.
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