USC abrogates freedom of speech: Jewish professor banned from campus for saying he hoped that all members of Hamas would be killed.

John Strauss, an economics professor at the University of Southern California (USC), has suffered one of the most ridiculous instances of professorial “cancellation” that I’ve heard of. He’s being punished by USC simply for exercising his right of free speech. (Although USC is a private school, it has a free-speech code that is close to the University of Chicago’s, and does not exempt “hate speech” so long as it conforms to the courts’ interpretation of the First Amendment.) Here’s an excerpt from their code:

Our longstanding policies also declare that the University of Southern California is committed to fostering a learning environment where free inquiry and expression are encouraged and celebrated and for which all its members share responsibility. Dissent — disagreement, a difference of opinion, or thinking differently from others — is an integral aspect of expression in higher education, whether it manifests itself in a new and differing theory in quantum mechanics, a personal disagreement with a current foreign policy, opposition to a position taken by the university itself, or by some other means.  The university is a diverse community based on free exchange of ideas and devoted to the use of reason and thought in the resolution of differences.  The university recognizes the crucial importance of preserving First Amendment rights and maintaining open communication and dialogue in the process of identifying and resolving problems which arise in the dynamics of life in a university community.

Sadly, Professor Strauss, who is Jewish, uttered a statement that, while conforming to USC’s definition of free speech, has gotten him into big trouble. Click below to read about it in the Los Angeles Times.

Most of the incident was filmed, and, indeed, Strauss was simply using his free speech. There are data!

The details from the LA Times:

Until recently, USC professor John Strauss was known mostly for his research on the economics of developing countries, with decades of fieldwork in Indonesia and China.

That changed Nov. 9, when Strauss stopped before students staging a walkout and protest calling for a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip and holding a memorial to thousands of Palestinian civilians killed in the Israel-Hamas war.

The economics professor’s interactions with students that day ended with the 72-year-old Strauss, who is Jewish, declaring: “Hamas are murderers. That’s all they are. Every one should be killed, and I hope they all are killed.”

Strauss told a group of pro-Palestinian students demonstrating on campus: “No, shame on you. You people are ignorant. Really ignorant. Hamas are murderers. That’s all they are. Every one should be killed, and I hope they all are.”

Students captured those remarks on their cellphones, almost instantly seeming to recognize a viral moment. “Can you say that for the camera?” one pressed.

Within hours, Strauss’ comments were posted online, shared and reshared on X, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.

Here’s the full clip of the interaction with pro-Palestinian students that got Strauss in trouble. I can’t make out what he’s saying, but even the complaining students verified that what he said is what’s given above: wishing for Hamas members to all be killed:

More from the paper:

As his remarks raced across the internet, his condemnation of Hamas was often excised, leaving only his “hope” for “all” to be killed. Captions and comments online framed his demand for “every one” to be killed in myriad, at times deceptive, ways. One Instagram post shared to millions of users claimed falsely that Strauss told the students, “[I] hope you get killed….”

Some of the clip was truncated to make Strauss looks as if he were saying that all Palestinians should be killed. Here’s that clip:

He was punished by USC almost immediately after “offended” students complained to the University. Need I add that saying one thinks members of Hamas should be killed is simply freedom of speech? It can’t even be considered hate speech or incitement to violence because presumably there were no members of Hamas in attendance! Further, trying to kill all members of Hamas is in fact Israel’s precise goal in the recent war.

Within a day, an associate dean told Strauss that he was on paid administrative leave, barred from campus, and that he would no longer teach his undergraduates this semester.

Within the week, a petition demanding that USC fire Strauss for his “racist, xenophobic behavior” and comments that “promote and incite violence” had collected more than 6,500 signatures.

Meanwhile, more than 9,000 signed a counter-petition decrying USC’s treatment of Strauss as “unjust,” saying he was the victim of online misinformation, and demanding that the university reinstate him.

Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Los Angeles, called for USC to launch an investigation into Strauss and to take actions to protect “Muslim, Palestinian and Arab students as well as any others who are targeted by hate and bigotry.”

ADVERTISEMENT

Jonathan Friedman, director of free expression at PEN America, criticized USC for “a shocking overreaction,” adding in a statement, “What USC has done runs counter to the university’s obligation to foster dialogue and debate.”

By now, millions have viewed portions of Strauss’ remarks, and his statements — and USC’s response — have become a Rorschach test for a war raging 7,500 miles away.

With its political, ethnic, generational and religious fault lines, the incident has reignited intractable debates over campus censorship, academic freedom and student safety. Nearly every student who spoke to The Times for this article would do so only on condition of anonymity, citing a fear of online harassment

Need I add that that this is punishment, both investigations and barring a professor from campus—punishment for exercising free speech? That violates USC’s own policies and is something for which Strauss could sue the school.  Oh, and he stepped on a paper list of putative killed Palestinians, which he avers (and I believe) was an accident. And, at any rate, that “offense” is not why Strauss was punished:

Near a busy campus corridor, the event also included a memorial to Palestinians killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, a death toll that was then about 10,000 and that has since grown to more than 13,000, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry. Partly enclosed by a fence, the memorial featured four long rolls of paper, at least 18 inches wide, unfurled several feet across the ground. On the paper were printed thousands of names.

Students said that when Strauss came to the demonstration, he stepped on the paper. One student said he was “desecrating the names.”

“All I did was walk through the crowd,” Strauss said, insisting he never saw the list of names but spotted the memorial later in the day after the crowd had dissipated. He acknowledged that he “might well have accidentally walked on” the list but said it was “completely unintentional.”

No one appears to have recorded the first interaction, but students say his presence caused a stir.

Yes, of course it did; he’s known, he’s Jewish, and he wished for Hamas to be killed—a sentiment that many of us probably share. The event blew up more as Muslim or pro-Palestinian students weighed in to damn Strauss. This puzzles me because pro-Palestinian students finally admitted that Strauss was referring to Hamas, not Palestinians. But it didn’t matter: once you’re offended, the cortisol keeps circulating until you get the professor fired. I’ve bolded one bit of the report below:

But as the clip circulated online, it was at times trimmed to a few seconds of Strauss uttering, “Every one should be killed.”

The captions and superimposed text in social media posts could be minimal, misleading or wrong.

“This zionist econ professor purposefully stepped on the list of martyrs before our march and came by again after & said ‘everyone should be killed,’” a student group posted on Instagram.

Another post on Instagram, shared by @CravingPalestine and activist Shaun King, among others, said Strauss “threatened these students ‘hope you get killed and I hope they all are (*Gaza)” during a campus rally for Gaza.” That post has been viewed more than 3.2 million times.

At one point, the group Trojans for Palestine clarified on Instagram that Strauss “did not say he wanted Palestinians to be killed, but Hamas,” according to screenshots of the post.

Then, the group appeared to walk it back: “With his hateful rhetoric, you can draw your own conclusion about whether or not he wished death upon just Hamas or civilians as well.”

Within hours of Strauss’ recorded comments, USC’s Muslim Student Union issued a statement saying that Strauss was “repeatedly calling for the murder of the entirety of Palestine” and expressing “a desire for the death of those supporting Palestine.”

What we see here is a group of The Offended admitting that Strauss was talking about Hamas, but then adding, in a reprehensible bit of rhetoric, “you can draw your own conclusions”. But there’s a video, and the video, even according to the Trojans for Palestine, shows that Strauss was talking about Hamas. The conclusion to be drawn is simply that Trojans for Palestine are trying to get a Jewish professor punished for wishing for the extermination of Hamas.

Since then, USC has backed off a bit: it now allows Strauss to teach undergrads, too, but only remotely. He is still banned from campus. And now he is, as expected, being deluged with hate mail (this is of course legal unless that hate mail threatens him).  Complaints have also been fired against him by USC’s “equity, diversity, and Title IX office”. For what, I wonder? Haven’t the administrators viewed the “incriminating” video? If they had acted properly, they would have seen the clip and dismissed the case as in conformity with the University’s freedom of speech policy. But they didn’t.

And so the Academic Freedom Alliance has provided Strauss with a lawyer, and FIRE has written a letter to Carol Folt, USC’s President, which includes the following paragraphs:

Neither the First Amendment nor USC’s policies shield Strauss from every consequence of his expression—including criticism by students, faculty, or the broader community. Criticism is
“more speech,” the remedy to offensive expression the First Amendment prefers to censorship.  But university policies that invoke the First Amendment limit the types of consequences that may be imposed on protected expression, and who may impose them.

Restricting Strauss to teaching remotely the rest of the semester is precisely the type of consequence for constitutionally protected expression that USC’s First Amendment– mirroring Faculty Handbook plainly prohibits, because such a restriction is likely to chill future faculty speech. The question is not whether formal punishment is meted out, but whether the institution’s actions “would chill or silence a person of ordinary firmness from future [expressive] activities[.]”  Courts have explicitly recognized consequences similar to those imposed on Strauss, such as changes to working conditions or restricting access to the institution’s facilities as sufficiently chilling speech. Whether the university labels the restriction “administrative leave” is irrelevant to the analysis: USC violated Strauss’s free speech rights by imposing the remote–teaching restriction in response to his protected expression.

They’re right and USC is acting shamefully. It doesn’t matter what Strauss said so long as it conformed to protected First Amendment speech, which it surely did. And I’d be just a peeved if he walked by a bunch of pro-Israel students and said that Israeli West Bank settlers who attacked Palestinians should all be killed.

USC has a history of both administrative and student anti-Israel or antisemitic actions (see the open letters here, here, here, and here). While some of this is protected speech, and other letters call for the University to violate institutional neutrality (which it does NOT have anyway), these incidents have, in toto, created a climate at the University in which Jewish students feel endangered.  And if that impedes the function of the University, which is to teach such students and not chill their speech, the atmosphere needs to be addressed. I don’t know what to do about that without asking for violations of the First Amendment or of the principle of institutional neutrality (USC doesn’t have it, but all schools should). Still, the one thing that USC can do is not cancel professors who criticize Hamas.

WHAT YOU CAN DO: If you think Dr. Strauss has been unfairly treated, you can send an email to USC here via the FIRE website. I did, and I wrote my own email although there’s a boilerplate one on the site.

h/t: Anna