We, the undersigned, express our unequivocal solidarity with the four adjunct faculty members recently terminated by the City University of New York (CUNY)—a deeply troubling act of administrative repression and a clear violation of their Academic Freedom and First Amendment rights. These terminations are part of a broader campaign of institutional retaliation, which includes punitive actions targeting faculty, students, and organizers engaged in advocacy to end the genocide in Gaza and in support of Palestinian liberation—including the disciplinary charges leveled against several students, such as organizer Hadeeqa Arzoo Malik.

The termination of the four adjunct faculty members must be understood in the context of their structurally precarious positions within the academic labor hierarchy—positions that leave contingent workers especially vulnerable to institutional reprisal. These firings cannot be separated from the broader political economy of neoliberal labor exploitation that defines much of contemporary higher education in the United States. In this moment of resurgent repression, it is clear that academic freedom does not meaningfully exist for adjuncts, given their weak contractual protections. But these firings are merely the canaries in the coal mine. They reflect a wider pattern of systemic fascist repression—one that increasingly targets even tenured faculty members who speak out in opposition to genocide, express solidarity with the Palestinian people, and advance anti-colonial and anti-imperialist pedagogy.

Dr. Corinna Mullin, a dedicated scholar, educator, and principled organizer, is one of the faculty members who has been fired. Dr. Mullin is a highly respected scholar of international relations, the politics of the Middle East, and international political economy. Her scholarship is inseparable from her political commitments: in and beyond the classroom, she has courageously taught about the structures of imperialism, capitalism, zionism, and the global logics of domination and resistance. As an adjunct, Dr. Mullin taught across multiple departments and campuses, navigating long commutes and last-minute schedule changes, yet she consistently upheld the highest standards of academic excellence—earning the care and admiration of the thousands of CUNY students she has taught. Although the CUNY administration has provided no formal explanation for the dismissal of Dr. Mullin and three other adjunct faculty, Chancellor Matos Rodríguez confirmed during the McCarthyite Congressional hearing on “Antisemitism in Higher Education” (July 15, 2025) that the firings were unrelated to their teaching or academic records, but rather stemmed from their expressions of solidarity with the Palestinian people.

The termination of Dr. Mullin’s employment reinforces what has become increasingly evident over the past 21 months: that U.S. universities are instruments of surveillance and coercion—institutions that discipline and expel those who dare to uphold the sanctity of life in the face of genocidal war-making. Dr. Mullin was left acutely vulnerable to orchestrated harassment campaigns by far-right and Zionist politicians and organizations—including New York City Council member Inna Vernikov, Congressional Representative Randy Fine, Betar, Canary Mission, and CAMERA—that have persistently targeted scholars and students engaged in Palestine solidarity work. Rather than protecting its educators from these attacks, CUNY has aligned itself with those seeking to criminalize dissent, erase Palestinian life and memory, and foreclose any meaningful challenge to the imperial architecture of U.S.-Israeli genocide.

Although CUNY claims to be a “people’s university” and proudly celebrates its history of student activism,its investments, real estate holdings, and Board of Trustees are completely hostile to the lives of the largely working-class, largely immigrant, Black and Brown New York communities the institution is meant to serve. Whereas elite universities such as Columbia, Harvard, or Yale have always functioned as an intellectual extension of settler-colonial-capitalist power, structurally invested in suppressing emancipatory movements, the CUNY administration’s increasing repression of anti-colonial dissent shows its willingness to set the largest urban public university on the same path.

What we are witnessing in American universities is the domestic extension of US-Zionist genocidal policy abroad—policies that have destroyed universities in Gaza and killed professors and scientists in Iran. While US-made weapons level Palestinian universities— every single university in Gaza has been destroyed— and bomb other regional higher education institutions like Shahid Beheshti University and the Lebanese University’s Hadath campus in southern Beirut, those who dare to speak against these crimes—students and professors alike—are silenced, expelled, and punished here at home. The same actors that destroy centers of knowledge abroad now criminalize truth-telling and solidarity within the US academy.

While we recognize that statements alone remain painfully inadequate in the face of such profound injustice, we nonetheless raise our collective voice to unequivocally condemn this repression. We call on CUNY to:

Immediately reinstate all four faculty members and all CUNY faculty and staff fired for Palestine solidarity.
Issue a public apology for the emotional and material harm caused by the firings.
Drop the disciplinary charges against Hadeeqa and other students facing punitive measures for their participation in anti-genocide protests.
Affirm the full protection of Academic Freedom at CUNY—especially for those committed to anti-colonial, anti-racist, and Palestine liberation struggles.

But condemnation must be matched by action. We call on all academics, scholars, universities, unions, and movements of conscience not only to stand in solidarity, but to act—to teach what Dr. Mullin and others have been punished for teaching, to say what they have been silenced for saying, and to do so louder, with greater clarity, and in bolder defiance. This includes the following demands:

CUNY and all U.S. higher education institutions must divest from settler colonialism and genocide;
CUNY’s governance structures must be transformed to end control by a Board of Trustees dominated by Wall Street financiers, corporate lawyers, and real estate moguls. Instead, governance must be placed in the hands of a democratically-constituted body made up of CUNY undergraduate and graduate students from all 25 community, senior and professional colleges, and CUNY university workers both educational and janitorial, as well as members of the broader NYC communities the university is meant to serve.
CUNY’s on-campus repressive apparatus (“public safety”) must be demilitarized and its collaboration with the NYPD must end.

In this moment, we are presented—again—with a clear choice: we either act to oppose and resist the US-Israeli genocidal war, or we choose to participate in the silence that grants impunity to the genocidaires. Let us, then, contest this repression and impunity by raising our voices in even greater numbers and with more force against the genocidal war. To remain quiet is to become complicit; to retreat is to make us all more vulnerable to repression. An attack on one is an attack on all!

To add your name to the statement, please click the following link: Statement in Solidarity with CUNY Faculty and Students Facing McCarthyite Retaliation for Palestine Solidarity

For full list of signatures updated every day see here: https://tinyurl.com/SolidarityCUNYStatement