In a letter dated 13 April 2024, the President of Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Mark D. Gearan, announced that Jodi Dean, the Donald R. Harter ’39 Professor of the Humanities and Social Sciences at the Colleges, has been relieved of teaching responsibilities. The reason provided for this decision was that in her article “Palestine Speaks for Everyone” (Verso blog, 9 April 2024) Professor Dean expressed views that might make students feel unsafe: “there now may be students on our campus who feel threatened in or outside of the classroom.” That makes it clear that President Gearan’s suspension of Professor Dean from teaching is viewpoint-based: the text of Professor Dean’s article does not contain incitement to violence, is not directed at specific individuals, nor does it create a clear and present danger—standard tests for acceptable limitations to free speech as per U.S. law and traditions, and according to the guidelines adopted by the American Association of University Professors, endorsed also by Hobart and William Smith Colleges. Regardless of one’s views on the Israel-Palestine conflict and of one’s opinion of Jodi Dean’s writing on that conflict, her suspension amounts to a grave violation of both freedom of speech and academic freedom.

We, the undersigned scholars, therefore urge President Gearan to rescind his order of suspension immediately, and to abstain from any further violations of the freedoms fundamental to any academic community.

Signed by:

1. Dr Enzo Rossi, University of Amsterdam
2. Prof. Albena Azmanova, University of Kent
3. Prof. Wendy Brown, Institute for Advanced Study
4. Prof. Raymond Geuss, University of Cambridge
5. Prof. Brian Leiter, University of Chicago Law School
6. Prof. Slavoj Žižek, Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, University of London
7. Prof. James K. Galbraith, University of Texas at Austin
8. Prof. Sally Haslanger, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
9. Prof. Andreas Kalyvas, The New School
10. Prof. Anne Norton, University of Pennsylvania
11. Prof. Richard Sennett, London School of Economics and Political Science
12. Prof. Andrew Arato, The New School
13. Prof. Craig Calhoun, Arizona State University
14. Prof. Mieke Bal, University of Amsterdam
15. Sebastian Budgen, Editorial Director, Verso
16. Prof. John P. McCormick, University of Chicago
17. Prof. Alberto Toscano, Goldsmiths, University of London
18. Prof. Tithi Bhattacharya, Purdue University
19. Prof. Jason Brennan, Georgetown University
20. Prof. Nancy Fraser, The New School
21. Prof. Nadia Urbinati, Columbia University
22. Prof. Amia Srinivasan, University of Oxford
23. Prof. Peter Singer, Princeton University
24. Prof. Étienne Balibar, Université de Paris-Nanterre 
25. Prof. David Ingram, Loyola University Chicago
26. Prof. Robin Celikates, Freie Universität Berlin
27. Prof. Paul Apostolidis, London School of Economics and Political Science
28. Prof. Regina Kreide, Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen
29. Prof. Maria Aristodemou, Birbeck, University of London
30. Prof. Kennan Ferguson, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
31. Dr Layal Ftouni, Utrecht University
32. Dr Nasser Abourahme, Bowdoin College
33. Dr Ira Allen, Northern Arizona University
34. Prof. Steven Levine, University of Massachusetts, Boston
35. Dr Martha Palacio Avendaño, University of Alcalá
36. Dr Koshka Duff, University of Nottingham
37. Prof. Karl Widerquist, Georgetown University-Qatar
38. Dr James Pearson, University of Amsterdam
39. Dr Lorna Finlayson, University of Essex
40. Prof. Evgenii Dainov, New Bulgarian University
41. Prof. Ghassan Hage, University of Melbourne
42. Prof. Sarah Bracke, University of Amsterdam
43. Prof. Miriyam Aouragh, University of Westminster
44. Prof. Banu Bargu, University of California, Santa Cruz
45. Prof. Jamie Mayerfeld, University of Washington
46. Dr Iain MacKenzie, University of Kent
47. Dr Clara Mattei, The New School
48. Prof. Carolyn J. Eichner, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
49. Prof. Federica Gregoratto, Freie Universität Berlin
50. Prof. Sandipto Dasgupta, The New School
51. Prof. Dimitris Vardoulakis, Western Sydney University
52. Prof. Sofia Näsström, Uppsala University
53. Dr Uğur Aytaç, Utrecht University
54. Jamie van der Klaauw, Erasmus University Rotterdam
55. Dr Omar Jabary Salamanca, Université Libre de Bruxelles
56. Dr Lillian Cicerchia, University of Amsterdam
57. Dr Bruno Leipold, The New Institute
58. Dr Polly Pallister-Wilkins, University of Amsterdam
59. Prof. Robin Douglass, King’s College London
60. Prof. Darin Barney, McGill University
61. Dr Mai Taha, London School of Economics and Political Science
62. Dr Steven Klein, King’s College London
63. Prof. Hagar Kotef, SOAS, University of London  
64. Prof. Angelina Ilieva, University of Chicago
65. Prof. Ina Kerner, Universität Koblenz
66. Prof. Humeira Iqtidar, King's College London
67. Dr Ayça Çubukçu, London School of Economics and Political Science
68. Dr Peter Bratsis, City University of New York
69. Dr William Clare Roberts, McGill University
70. Dr Layla D. Brown, Northeastern University
71. Dr Mykolas Gudelis, The New School
72. Prof. Raymond Duvall, University of Minnesota
73. Dr Charisse Burden-Stelly, Wayne State University
74. Dr Nicholas Beuret, University of Essex
75. Dr Kai Heron, Lancaster University
76. Dr Joseph Choonara, University of Leicester
77. Dr Heidi Matthews, York University
78. Prof. Paul Passavant, Hobart and William Smith Colleges