Maura Finkelstein never hid her support for Palestinian liberation during her nine years working as a professor of anthropology at Muhlenberg College, a small liberal arts school in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
“I have always had an ethical practice of making sure that I include Palestine in my teaching,” Finkelstein told me. “It was never outside the bounds of what I do.”
For Finkelstein, who is Jewish, this was not always easy. More than 30 percent of Muhlenberg’s 2,200 students are Jewish, many of them vocal supporters of Israel.
Neither her longtime public support of Palestinians, however, nor the courses on Palestine she taught in her early years at the school prevented Finkelstein from earning tenure in 2021. Following the arduous tenure process, professors are supposed to enjoy lifetime job security and robust safeguards of academic freedom. The bar for dismissal from a tenured academic position is by design meant to be extremely high, requiring justifiable cause.
Hellbound and Down 