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A tenured professor can spend decades building a career, win awards, earn lifetime recognition, and still be discarded the moment political speech crosses an invisible line. That is what happened to Dr. Sang-hae Kil after she supported Palestinian protest on campus. Her teaching record was untouched, her scholarship praised, and a faculty panel ruled unanimously against punishment — yet San José State University fired her anyway. The message is unmistakable: on many campuses, academic freedom survives only until it collides with Palestine.
Academic Freedom on Trial: The Firing of Sang Hea Kil and the Campus Culture of Fear
San Jose State professor fights back after being fired over Palestine protest
Highlights Article: Sang-Hea Kil on Academic Freedom and Campus Suppression
00:00–00:33 – Introduction
Robert Scheer opens Scheer Intelligence by noting the chilling climate in U.S. higher education under current political pressures. He introduces Sang-Hea Kil, a tenured professor at San Jose State University (SJSU), emphasizing her distinguished career and award-winning scholarship, including the 2021 Outstanding Academic Title in Media and Communication.
00:33–01:37 – The Case Against Kil
Scheer frames Kil’s termination as a test of academic freedom in America. Despite her tenured status—which is meant to protect faculty from politically motivated firing—Kil was terminated, illustrating the erosion of academic protections.
01:37–03:40 – Why Kil Was Targeted
Kil clarifies that her termination had nothing to do with her classroom teaching or academic performance. She attended campus events and asked questions challenging speakers denying the genocide in Gaza, exercising her rights as a citizen and faculty member. Despite the faculty committee unanimously clearing her, the administration moved forward with her termination.
03:40–06:56 – Historical Context and Escalation
Kil references prior cases, such as Stephen Salaita (2015), as precedents for attacks on tenure over pro-Palestinian speech. She highlights that her case is more severe because she was a full professor with nearly 20 years at SJSU, a spotless record, and strong community ties.
06:56–09:26 – Specific Allegations Against Kil
Kil outlines the three campus events cited against her:
- The Pro-Genocide Lecture – Kil attended to ask critical questions; the university moved it to a private setting and falsely accused her of organizing protests.
- Sit-In Protest (May 8, 2024) – She gave an impromptu speech supporting students, emphasizing free speech and assembly. The administration claimed she “incited students” to violate policies.
- Student Encampment – Kil joined a Muslim student-led encampment to support their protest; the university alleged she organized it, which was false.
09:26–10:24 – Union and Arbitration Process
Kil fought to have her case heard publicly through her union, the California Faculty Association (CFA). Despite initial resistance, the faculty hearing panel unanimously ruled in her favor. She is now proceeding to arbitration, confident in justice prevailing.
10:36–15:48 – Silence on Campuses
Kil and Scheer discuss widespread faculty silence on Palestine-related issues, which she attributes to compromised leadership at universities, unions, and fear of political backlash. She emphasizes the importance of public hearings over closed-door settlements to uphold transparency and accountability.
16:10–18:47 – Time, Place, Manner & External Pressures
The university cited “time, place, manner” policies to limit speech, reducing constitutional protections on campus. External influences, including Hillel and political lobbying, directed the administration to investigate Kil and framed the charges.
18:56–20:44 – Historical Perspective
Scheer and Kil highlight that academic freedom traditionally protects faculty engagement in public discourse. Kil’s actions did not interfere with teaching or student learning, underscoring the absurdity of the administration’s claims.
20:44–27:57 – Anti-Zionism vs. Anti-Semitism & California Law
Kil details how the conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism is used to silence pro-Palestinian faculty. She critiques California’s AB 715, which creates a chilling effect for educators discussing Israel-Palestine in K–12, reflecting broader systemic pressures.
27:58–34:53 – Careerism, Funding, and Solidarity
Scheer and Kil discuss the role of careerism and fear in silencing faculty. Kil notes that support has come from Jewish Voice for Peace, CARE, and the Palestinian Caucus of her union, though major Asian organizations have not publicly supported her. She also highlights the financial pressures and grant cuts facing SJSU, exacerbating faculty fear of speaking out.
34:53 – Call to Action
Kil shares the Switchboard rapid response network fundraiser supporting her through the arbitration process, reinforcing the need for public engagement in defending academic freedom and faculty rights.
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Raw Transcript
00:00.66
robert Scheer
Hi, this is Robert Shearer with another edition of Shear Intelligence. where this, I know it’s a really terrible title of conceit, but it was given to me by the NPR station in Santa Monica, KCRW. And now in the era of Trump, I’m no longer with them, as many good people seem to be severing their relations. One of them is our guest today who was severed from San Jose State. I can’t trace it directly to Trump, but it certainly relates to the atmosphere in this country right now.
00:33.94
robert Scheer
Dr. Sung-hae Kil, it’s a Korean name and I’m not sure I’m pronouncing it right, but I practice so it sounds pretty good. And a full tenured professor at San Jose State, won awards. she The one I particularly was impressed with, the winner in 2021 of Outstanding Academic Title Media and Communication, the choice of the the publishing art of the college and research libraries. And you know you really had a very active, wonderful career. And in this climate, however, to express any support for the Palestinians, of course, is a good way to get terminated.
01:16.30
robert Scheer
It’s the end of academic freedom. And that’s what happened to you. And according to the American Association of University Professors, which I happen to belong to, I respect that organization. been around for a long time. You’re the only tenured professor so far. A lot of people have been terminated, but you’re in this protected category.
01:37.78
robert Scheer
You paid your dues, you got your degrees, you did the whole thing. and you know and this is And this really goes to the heart of the issue of academic freedom. And this discussion we’re having, we’ve written about your case, and we’re trying to cover on ShearPost, the publication that I edit, the whole crisis of academic freedom here. And if you lose academic freedom, you lose any barrier to tyranny. of that That’s what we saw in Germany. We’ve seen it all over the world. And so you are actually the most important test case
02:09.85
robert Scheer
we have right now and i’d like to have that discussion the spirit and what they did at San Jose state and they ignored their own academic committee which sided with you.
02:20.91
robert Scheer
Myers, That nothing you’ve done with justify termination and I gather you’re still in the arbitration process. Most of these universities, you sign an agreement that you’ll go for arbitration that’s convenient to the bureaucracy, but they haven’t even waited for the arbitration to be settled.
02:37.98
robert Scheer
They terminated jew and you and you’re suddenly without a job. And that’s what tenure is supposed to avoid. And what it makes it particularly revealing of of what this current state is of attack on academic freedom, this is not for anything you did in a classroom.
02:56.01
robert Scheer
It’s not for your teaching. And that is, you know, the whole argument is they say, well, you know, if it’s teaching is, you know, your your promise and so forth. And what all you did was engage as a citizen, as well as a faculty member in witnessing an encounter on campus where they brought in a speaker who denying there’s genocide in Gaza and you were there to raise some questions about it. But no one is saying that you misused the classroom, you misused your profession, that you didn’t perform adequately with your students. There’s nothing of that. So I’m gonna let you tell us where it stands now, but I gather it’s quite grim that, you know, you, again, what academic freedom is supposed to mean
03:40.76
robert Scheer
is that whatever you want teach or say in the field that you know a lot about, you’ve written, ah you know, done very important work on the border, on how we feel refugees and immigrants and so forth. And, you know, it’s right up your alley. You’re not somebody who’s supposed to be teaching calculus, daring to talk about, you know,
04:00.60
robert Scheer
politics or something. This is in your area. And so what I don’t understand, let me just cut to the chase. You’re not in one of those bad red states, right? You’re not in a place run by Trumpites, you know? Here, Gavin Newsom, unfortunately, signed a bill that went into law in January that very seriously threatens academic freedom, but he claims it’s really not intended to do that. It’s just intended to make a safe environment but in the classroom.
04:30.58
robert Scheer
And so why don’t you take it over from here? And, you know, where do we stand on this case? Because again, with the jury out, which is after all, what arbitration is supposed to be, without even getting that result, and despite the fact that a faculty committee unanimously said, this is not occasion where is valid to fire someone, they they just went ahead, the university professor president, right?
04:57.11
sang kil
Yeah, so I’d like to clarify some points, I think. Thank you so much for the introduction. I really appreciate you tracking my case. So Stephen Salata is actually the first person to be fired as a tenured professor at his associate you know professor ranking at the University of Chicago-Urbana back, I think, in 2015 when he tweeted about the massacre in Gaza then.
05:22.65
sang kil
And so what happened in his case is that he was unhired because he was moving from, I think, a Virginia institution to to Illinois. And they basically you know fired him from a tenured position that he had yet to to start. So he’s he’s the first historical case of attacking the tenure system.
05:44.09
sang kil
um for pro-Palestine speech. So I think what makes my case a little different is and shows an escalation is that I’m a you know full tenured professor. I’ve been at my institution for almost 20 years. I have a relationship with my community there. I built my career there um and they fired me.
06:06.30
sang kil
I had a no record of discipline or anything in my personnel action file. and you know they And I’m reference what you said in the intro too. you know They’re taking this like moment basically of MAGA and Zion teaming up to attack higher ed in order to bend the knee to the MAGA-Trump team up, MAGA-Zion team up, excuse me.
06:34.52
sang kil
In order to, in my belief, stave off any additional cuts that’s that has already happened or continue to happen to higher ed. So you’re correct. I’m not being punished for anything I teach in my classroom. And I do teach a comparative, you know Palestine and Mexico border class. I’m not getting fired for that.
06:56.72
sang kil
I’m getting fired simply because I showed up to three events. The first event was the one that you mentioned where someone who denied a ga ah genocide in Gaza wanted to talk about a two-state peace solution on my campus.
07:08.82
sang kil
And I had some issues with it and was going to show up and ask him in the Q&A why he thought he had a box to stand on on the issue. But instead, there was an academic ambush. They moved a private, i mean, public talk to a private classroom, didn’t tell anybody. We all showed up to this private classroom. And then they turn around and said, I was the organizer of the counter demonstration that erupted when they had no access to this lecture, and that I’m the mastermind of all protests at San Jose State University.
07:38.19
sang kil
Another example they said is I showed up a sit-in protest at San Jose State University, May 8th, 2024. This was after that pro-genocide lecture that my DEI office had collaborated with.
07:52.34
sang kil
I just showed up to this sit-in protest to ah ah protest the genocide and I gave an impromptu speech where I did three things. i I said what beautiful things I saw at the San Francisco State Student Encampment because I live in San Francisco.
08:06.30
sang kil
I said, um you know, Time Place Manor is you know not a policy prison and we still have free speech rights because I had just recently saw um the memo from Wiener to the UC Regent system. And I live in California and San Jose State isn’t California, we’re blue state.
08:23.65
sang kil
Basically telling the UC Regents that he wanted them to weaponize Time Place Manor and upgrade it to fight, quote unquote, anti-Semitism. And we all read that as pro-Palestine speech. So they said that I incited students to violate Time Place Manor with my impromptu speech supporting the sit-in protest. And then the final thing that they said that i violated was that I was the only faculty to encamp with the mostly Muslim student encampment that did appear on my campus five days later after I gave that impromptu speech at the sit-in.
08:55.56
sang kil
They’re saying that i I commanded the students to do it, that I organized the students to do it and that I was a leader of that encampment, which is totally not true. That was a student-led movement. And I did support them.
09:08.05
sang kil
And no other faculty did camp out with them. And so that just made me an easy target since I had no solidarity with other faculty on my campus to support these students fighting a genocide. And what was unique about my student camp it, it was the seventh and the last of the California State University encampments.
09:26.58
sang kil
And it was truly unique because it was a mostly Muslim student-led encampment. So that’s kind of the state of my case. I got my last paycheck Black Friday, 2025, as a happy holiday present from San Jose State University. we do i do have a union. it’s it’s California Faculty Association. i did have to struggle with union to get them to take my case seriously. and to fight for me. They did actually eventually did agree to do that. And we did very well at the faculty hearing, as you said. They unanimously voted in my favor, no punishment. And now we’re at the arbitration hearing level. I just completed the arbitr arbitration hearing last Tuesday. I can’t comment on the proceeds. But i feel just as confident as I did with the faculty hearing that justice will prevail for Palestine, for free speech, for protest on campus, and a right of assembly and our Constitution Amendment one for sure.
10:24.68
robert Scheer
So let me cut to the chase here because you mentioned it and saw the thing you did for the American Association University professors, we talked about the silence on the campuses.
10:36.09
robert Scheer
And when I read about your case, thought, well, come on, this is a no brainer. you know what What are we talking about? I mean, faculty have rights too. They can express their views. Certainly if they’re doing it outside of the classroom and there’s some ah public event and you were going to it, you were gonna ask a question.
10:56.28
robert Scheer
Wait a minute, you know we have academic freedom, but we also have freedom for citizens. We have freedom for non-citizens. We have freedom for, you know the right to assemble, the right to free speech, you we have all of this thing. So let’s say your crime was that you showed up at some kind of public demonstration and you, you know, participated in some way, you know, and you know How did this rise to a a firing offense? And then the fact that the academic committee, these three professors who looked at your case in detail, decided there was no basis. How does a ah the administrator of the school get to fire you? What then is academic freedom? What is tenure? I mean, it’s bizarre.
11:48.41
robert Scheer
And also, what is your right as just an individual human being? to express yourself that which is really use basic to the whole thing but i want to get to the silence on the campuses because i’ve experienced that somewhat myself and and it really is startling you know and it’s not as if the average faculty person is sanguine about the state of democracy and at this time in america I mean, most of the faculty actually talks about, well, is fascism coming or some variant of it? Are we going to survive this? Will there be another election? I hear this in the faculty club. I hear it all the time. So, you know, well, if we’re really concerned about what’s happening in the era of Trump and of course, attacks on academic freedom, particularly around Israel and Gaza started before Trump. You know, he even promised that he was not going to get us an endless war. He’s gotten it, well, might be the worst. But the fact of the matter is there’s very people who are being silent are the ones when you talk to them one-on-one tell you this country is in a terrible state and we’re losing our freedom. So what do we have here? Do we have the good Germans?
13:01.62
robert Scheer
Is this before when the Nazis came that the average, you know, Germany was the most advanced scientifically, had great arts, a great academic tradition and so forth, right?
13:12.47
robert Scheer
and and And people went along. Most of them went along. wi it That’s what I want to get at. I mean, you’re a popular member of the faculty. You’ve been there a long time. You’ve done excellent work. So why aren’t your colleagues speaking up?
13:28.25
robert Scheer
I mean, why fact, you know, I haven’t heard that much about this case, which I think is startling.
13:34.54
sang kil
Yeah, so I think I can explain the silences and I did write about this in my radical teacher pedagogical journal article that was published in December, 2025 to try to explain and rationalize the silences that I encountered.
13:49.24
sang kil
So I think what’s happening, and this echoes the nation and the world, is that our leadership is compromised on my campus, faculty leadership in general, my union leadership. And they all echoed the silence around the genocide that the administration had maintained, right? So the administration… sends emails to faculty all the time about wars, about natural disasters, about things that happen that are calamities to humanity. But when the Gaza genocide started, there was nothing.
14:20.18
sang kil
And faculty leadership, both in my faculty senate as well as my union, mimicked that silence, sending a chilling effect to the rest of the faculty on how not to speak about the gaza in the genocide in Gaza.
14:35.77
sang kil
So because like you explained, you know I do think that most people realize we are turning to fascism at this point and it’s growing and it’s getting more powerful, that I had a fight with my union to pick the public venue, the public hearing statutory venue, because they wanted me to go behind closed doors, the contractual route. You get three routes with Article 19, which is the collective bargaining agreement between CSU and CFA. And the first venue is contractual, which is behind closed door negotiations, cheap for the union to do. The second is the California Personnel Board, which is appointed by the governor, not interested for me. And the third one is the public hearing option, where three random faculty who are qualified to serve are then selected to hear your case.
15:25.18
sang kil
Now, that was the option that I chose against my university, um against my union advice, because even though I saw my faculty leadership compromised, just like I see our politicians compromised, I still believed in the humanity and the intelligence and the empathy of three random faculty to see my case as a just one.
15:48.63
sang kil
And I took a chance and I unanimously won their verdict of no punishment. Now, they might have said I so violated some policies on event number two, which was the speech for no genocide. I mean, the sit in protest. that I did in a prompt to speech and the encampment because there was an active time, place, manner policy that said no camping.
16:10.86
sang kil
I wasn’t aware of that at the time because we had this thing called poverty under the stars for over a decade where faculty and student encamped. So I saw no signage that said that that had stopped in order to stop all protest on campus. so So i do think that what’s happening here is is that you know, they’re attacking me because tenure is like a property. And it’s almost, I think that there’s an arguable case that it could be protected under, you know, Article 14 of our constitution.
16:43.32
sang kil
And it’s such a protected category that, you know, SJSU, CSU, MAGA, and Zion are teaming up to get rid of tenure in the higher ed system because it provides too much job protections and allows faculty like me to feel truly empowered to speak truth to power about abuses that you’re seeing on campus and in the world. So I do see that as being kind of the reason why, the ideological reason motive, why. But the mechanism is very interesting. They’re going after me for several things.
17:16.76
sang kil
But the time, place, manner is particularly important because time, place, manner says it has some legal precedent. that says you can’t interfere with university business and operating hours, right?
17:29.33
sang kil
And so they my my my my university basically published this website ah explaining how time-place manner actually diminishes your constitutional rights once you walk on campus. That’s that’s the argument they’re making for time-place manner.
17:44.18
sang kil
um so And then in addition, there’s a lot of external influences, like the ones that I told you about MAGA and Zion’s influence on my campus and university system. There’s also external things like Hillel, which was cited in my faculty hearing as being an external factor on my campus president. They had emailed my campus president, as well as the DEI director, basically ordering the campus to open an investigation on me when that that anti-Gaza genocide decided denier came to my campus and I just showed up.
18:17.50
sang kil
They told the university how to investigate me and they told me what to what to charge me with. And wow, they did. They followed the exact same letter that I was able to get through a public records request.
18:30.26
sang kil
And they accidentally slipped it to me because I asked it from my president’s email. She gave me nothing, but the DEI director screwed up and gave it to me. And the faculty hearing cited that as external forces, you know, because AEUP has warned that external forces are dismantling higher ed.
18:47.22
sang kil
And they gave a call to higher ed administrations not to fold. But here is a like clear case in point where my university is folding.
18:56.66
robert Scheer
Yeah, but so let’s let’s put this in historical context. of We’ve had active campus life protests all over the world.
19:07.86
robert Scheer
People in overtly totalitarian question countries have protested at great risk. And it’s generally been accepted that academic freedom is not restricted to just what you have to say in one week or so forth and and that when you’re covering it in your syllabus. I don’t want to get into all all that, but but what is critical here is to understand by the basic tenet of academic freedom, you did nothing to threaten that because you did not misuse your classroom. You did not deliberately distort things for your students. You did not interfere with their freedom of inquiry.
19:51.00
robert Scheer
On the contrary, you went to one of the meetings basically to raise questions. to to debate, to challenge. So if we, you know, it’s it’s not like you were wasting their time as students who are not giving them what they had paid for by taking your calculus class and turning it into a discussion of Mideast politics or something. You were exercising your rights as an individual, as a member of a campus community to go to ah what you thought was a public meeting and to raise questions and then they changed. So I want to make that clear. And that’s of course why those three professors voted for you. This does not rise to any traditional notion of violating academic freedom. It’s an absurd case. So I want to get at the silence of of people.
20:44.18
robert Scheer
And I also want to challenge you on some of the labels here because I don’t think, you know, Zion, Magda, what was the third one you have there? The three,
20:56.25
sang kil
MAGA Zion.
20:56.30
robert Scheer
Zion, and mouth maga right? to it
21:01.19
sang kil
MAGA. Yeah, I mean, I do call it MAGA Zion. Yeah, you’re allowed to challenge me.
21:04.76
robert Scheer
You had a third one. No, but I want to challenge that because right what we’re really talking about, and this is where I bring up here in a blue state that what the governor signed into law and went into law in January, is this whole idea of what is anti-Semitism?
21:21.02
robert Scheer
And any disagreement with the government of Israel, you know, and it’s pretty extreme by most people’s standard or lived in Israel or studied about it or anything, it’s the most right-wing, super-nationalistic government, so forth. But you’re in a war now.
21:41.62
robert Scheer
And Israel and the United States are waged in this war. So I was thinking that when I was preparing for this this morning, you you have somebody like this, Joe Kent, who is one of the top national security people in the Trump administration, right?
21:56.92
robert Scheer
And he, you know, he’s in charge of one of the top people in charge of national security and everything. He re resigned and he posted this statement, you know, today.
22:08.57
sang kil
Yes, I read it.
22:09.53
robert Scheer
He said, you know, Iran and he was in on the planning and everything. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation. And it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.
22:25.21
robert Scheer
Now, okay. Now that’s a statement made by a person who’s sympathetic to Trump and had his respect and as a MAGA person and so forth. So I don’t want to type people because what’s happening into the country right now is there are a lot of disappointed Trump supporters. You said you were going to keep us out of wars. What are we doing in this war? And and why are we doing in this war? And you can’t discuss this war in any intelligent way without mentioning Israel.
22:54.90
robert Scheer
And you certainly can’t give up your right to criticize Israel when you have the right, presumably, to criticize your own government. If I want to criticize Trump, I don’t think they can at this moment say I can’t do it. They might next week. But the idea that you can’t criticize Israel for what it’s doing in Iran and its influence, and that’s what this Joe Kent said. I repeat it because it’s so powerful. He said, Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.
23:29.21
robert Scheer
Now, I dare say, if any professor at any major university actually gave a lecture about this powerful pro-Israel lobby, they’d probably be in risk of being fired.
23:40.05
robert Scheer
Right?
23:40.50
sang kil
Oh yeah, definitely.
23:41.51
robert Scheer
You know, this is an oh no.
23:41.63
sang kil
definitely
23:43.74
robert Scheer
Oh no, Israel is just defending itself. It just has the right to so forth. So what I want to underscore something you said about the silence and what the issue is here. It is just for any intellectual or any human being actually to hold the thought in their head that they’re preserving the freedom of the university by being silent when the very heart of the enterprise is being destroyed.
24:08.76
robert Scheer
The idea that because of some nation, any nation, whatever claims to represent, acts with great violence, great effect, as it influences a lot of things in the world, you know whether it’s North Korea or it’s Israel or it’s the United States or it’s China.
24:25.56
robert Scheer
And if and an academic community you don’t have the right to examine it. And particularly someone in your case teaches issues that go up against politics and so forth. It’s a mockery of any idea of freedom. I don’t care where it’s done in the world. So the people at your campus have to know that.
24:44.63
robert Scheer
They know that. And what I’ve just said is absolutely we all were raised with this idea of what freedom is and academic freedom. So I wanna know how they keep a straight face when you talk to them.
24:55.74
sang kil
Yeah, so um so there’s this thing called Hesburgh, which I call the Zionist Lime Machine, and that did function for me at my campus in the sense that they came at,
25:10.23
sang kil
after me with the conflation that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism, but they wouldn’t say it in the top charging documents. what they said What they did instead is say that I violated campus climate, but they didn’t say who I was discriminating against. But because I’m a discourse and communication scholar, I did a keyword search of the charging documents to search for all nations, all races, you know all this stuff. And you know the only things that are mentioned are Israel, Palestine, Jews, Muslims, Arabs, Hillel, no other racial group or nation is mentioned. So by process of elimination, they’re coming after me with anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism, even though they didn’t say it.
25:53.69
sang kil
And so this speaks to the larger problem of the Department of Education versus AEUP. So AEUP sets our professional standards for faculty in higher ed, and AEUP strongly came out to say that anti-Zionism is dionism is not anti-Semitism.
26:12.09
sang kil
However, because of the Department Education under Trump 1 regime, you implemented that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. And now we’re seeing that in full force under the Trump II regime, especially in the realm of higher education. And you saw all those attacks that happened particularly to the Ivy Leagues in the East Coast, but also many other universities like UCLA and others in the West Coast.
26:38.20
sang kil
So they’re using things like campus climate to go after people, ah to defend Israel’s kind of genocidal actions towards the Palestinian people or whatever neo-colonial configurations they wanna do in the Middle East.
26:50.84
sang kil
um And with the intent of silencing faculty um who are you know embedded in these critical think tanks called universities that have the um you know positions and the resources to be able to speak out, especially the ones with you know the protections of tenure.
27:10.87
sang kil
But right now, like you said, and you referenced a couple times, you know, Gavin Newsom passed AB 715, which conflates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism in K through 12 classrooms in California.
27:23.77
sang kil
And while that law doesn’t affect me and other faculty in the classroom, well, not me anymore, I’m fired. But it does set the chilling example as a democratic blue example. And I call this a blue MAGA maneuver of basically, know,
27:38.22
sang kil
Silencing criticisms of Israel and our collaborative actions with them in the Middle East. So that’s, I think, again, contributes to the silence. It’s another layer of why, you know, grounded, intellectual, loving faculty on campuses all across the nation are choosing to stay silent.
27:57.27
sang kil
um And
27:58.02
robert Scheer
I don’t think that’s the reason if I could interrupt sorry, because, first of all, I am Jewish. I know a lot of Jewish faculty members and so forth. And, and, and I don’t care what your background or who you are, whatever. If you are now awake,
28:13.34
robert Scheer
in this world where we can bomb ah countries, we can take them over whether they’re called Venezuela or Iran, we can do what we want. And in this really startling case, you’re doing it with Israel, which certainly has a questionable record in relation to the region and to the Palestinian.
28:30.36
robert Scheer
people and so forth uh it’s just so obvious that that logical people i don’t care what their background their politics or they know it’s garbage they just know it’s garbage you they know this is stuff that has i don’t well you’re frowning but i i mean i’m i’m out there also you know ah and And it’s just silly.
28:50.94
robert Scheer
yeah yeah you know They might not agree that Israel’s in the wrong or something, but the idea that it’s not debatable, that there are not profound questions of human rights involved, and so it’s just utter nonsense.
29:02.14
robert Scheer
You don’t blow up schools and and things. Okay, but I don’t want to lose my thread here.
29:08.16
sang kil
I can’t, I can,
29:09.92
robert Scheer
I just don’t want to lose my thread here. I think what’s really an issue is careerism. And what Trump did is he went after the money. And he said, you people really have a good life.
29:23.96
robert Scheer
You know, if you’re a tenured professor and certainly at one of these major research universities, you’re probably making a quarter of a million dollars. And your spouse is probably making a quarter of million dollars or 200,000 or 300,000. a year. You don’t do all that much work. you You know, when you get to the highest rank and so forth. And you know what? And he said it to Harvard. He said it to Columbia. said it to all these people. He said, i’m just going to take away your toys.
29:50.57
robert Scheer
I’m just going to take away the gravy train here. And you’re going to have to scrounge like crazy for money, you know, and and they and they’ve collapsed. They collapse. So I don’t even want to dignify this with the idea that they really think this is not a serious attack on freedom.
30:08.32
robert Scheer
They’re quite willing to accept the loss of freedom to keep their money, their perks, their status and their safety because they’re afraid of of the bully. You know, so I really in in terms of this discussion, and when we wrap it up, the idea that you even have a case, the idea that you know, really, that you have to sit there and say, oh, wait a minute, I went to a meeting, but I didn’t do this. And I said this.
30:33.48
robert Scheer
It’s absurd. It’s absurd. You have the right as a human being. ah to, you know, wherever you are, you’re on a campus, you’re on the subway, wherever you are to say, hey, I think that’s genocide. Now, somebody doesn’t have to agree with you.
30:47.45
robert Scheer
You certainly have the right to say that. Look, they’re dropping all these bombs, they’re killing these people, they’re doing ethnic cleansing, whatever, you know, and as I said, I’ve been saying off from the beginning, this is not something you were pushing on your students. It was not something you were doing to dilute the classwork or interfere with academic standards.
31:07.71
robert Scheer
All right. This was something that you had the right to walk across a campus and somebody is going to be giving a speech and you say, I’m going to go and I’m going to ask them some tough questions. It’s a right that any members, staff, faculty, students should have the right. Right. And then they say change the meeting in this case to where it was, no, it’s not a public meeting. It’s going to be a private meeting, blah, blah, blah. OK.
31:29.59
robert Scheer
And that’s a technicality that the academic review committee rejected. They said, no, let’s get to the facts here. You were found innocent by the only group that should have been allowed to judge you, right? Your peers.
31:43.22
robert Scheer
And you were found innocent by them. And the president of that school, because he don’t care about his peers and he doesn’t care, he cares about some forces in the in the university that could take away his funding or make life miserable for him. And and he just said, I don’t care, you’re out.
31:58.04
robert Scheer
And so with that statement and the fact that it’s met with silence, means that these promises about academic integrity and freedom were fraudulent from the beginning. And I could point to case after case in American history where faculties collapsed. They certainly did during much of the Cold War.
32:16.32
robert Scheer
They did in much of the country during the civil rights movement and so forth. And, you know, women’s rights, my goodness, they all were practitioners of sexual discrimination and everything else forever. And even when women didn’t have the right right to vote, most of these famous academic institutions were in business. They went along with it cheerfully. OK, women can’t vote. We’ll still talk about democracy. So really what we’re seeing is is the a certain profound corruption of purpose in the American system. and And I think anyone looks at your case, you know, I mean, my God,
32:52.60
robert Scheer
The idea that you now are unemployed, that you have to worry about paying your bills, that you have a, what do you have, some kind of a site that people can help you get through? why don’t you mention this?
33:02.93
robert Scheer
How do people get more information about you and, you know,
33:05.43
sang kil
Yeah, thank you. Yeah, so Switchboard, which is a rapid response network that just formed a 15 plus national organizations did launch a fundraiser to help me get through this arbitration hearing process without a paycheck. And I will definitely share the link with you. Thank you so much for amplifying that.
33:26.17
sang kil
um But I just do want to mention to you that, yes, I do agree that there’s this kind of like careerism that gets involved in helping people not to speak out. And I do agree with you that the anti-Zionist Jews and Arab Muslim Swana faculty have overwhelmingly come out to support me as well as scholars for you know academic freedom like
33:49.34
robert Scheer
Jewish Voice for Peace, as what did
33:50.81
sang kil
Jewish Voice for Peace has been amazing. CARE has been amazing. PAM Caucus, the caucus the Palestinian Caucus of my union, CFA, has been amazing. um I do want to mention that there has been no major Asian group that has stood up for me publicly, and that does, I think, play into some of this, you know the politics of you know being visible for the fights against social justice.
34:13.94
sang kil
um that we need to think about. And then also too, in relation to the the comments you made about money. I mean, look, like San Jose State University is a research to university and they just got all their, you know, quote unquote, Hispanic serving grants from the federal government.
34:29.14
sang kil
cut off. More cuts are coming, just like Trump promised. you know He is dismantling higher ed and the Department of Education as we speak. he’s He’s cutting it up and he’s slicing it and giving it to other agencies. So, I mean, there’s just a lot of immense things that are going on that help suppress faculty from speaking out in any organized way. But I do agree with you that there are faculty that are brave.
34:53.78
sang kil
Right now, there’s just too few. That’s the problem. We haven’t hit a critical mass where faculty are willing to be brave enough, organized enough, and vocal enough in unison to fight back against what’s happening in higher ed.
35:07.22
robert Scheer
Yes, and it doesn’t, rec let’s also not give a um an out here. ah It doesn’t take that much courage. You know, we’re still we’re not at the stage where they’re putting us in the train to the camps and we’re not at the stage and we have ICE acting like a good Gestapo organization. But generally, there is still some push up and there’s pushback. And then, you know, it’s not all flying with the public and there’s criticism. And I think, for instance, on this war that Trump has done is a betrayal of a lot of what he campaigned on. And it’s going to backfire just like it backfired for Lyndon Johnson and backfired for George Bush and so forth. You know, ah the public can’t fool them all the time. And it’s so clear. And so in an odd way, we’re having discussion at this time where I suspect if people listen to it, they’ll say, well, wait a minute, what did she say?
36:00.92
robert Scheer
What did she say that’s so threatening, you know, really? What did she say? What, that Israel has committed so ah genocide? I mean, it’s been said by lots of people, including UN committees and and but World Courteness suggesting it and so forth. so wait Wait a minute, you can’t say it in a classroom, but so much of the world knows it. there have been votes at the UN backing that, you know, and the same thing ah in terms of ah your right to criticize, you know, the government. I mean, so in odd way, that president, what’s his name, the head of San Jose State?
36:38.39
sang kil
ah President Tiente Mason.
36:40.60
robert Scheer
Yeah, what is his field, by the way? Let’s see, I’m sorry.
36:42.62
sang kil
It’s she, and yeah, I mean, I think she’s just a you know corporate higher ed hack. She’s not an academic.
36:49.52
robert Scheer
Oh. Well, what and whatever it is, I mean, how could anybody in an academic setting think this is not a debatable subject, and that we have an obligation to debate? after that i I mean, I know, I’m like, come on, I eat in the faculty dining room. I i say i speak at campus, i I teach, you know, I’m around. And I just haven’t found anyone really who gives me a coherent argument ah you know you know, that this is all going well. They all know we’re violating every standard of decency and logic and, you know, what democracy should be. And so what they may disagree on the specifics. So what interests me about your case, and I would really call people’s attention to it, look into this case and you will see it’s so absurd.
37:38.52
robert Scheer
You know, we are not talking. I mean, it would be different. And I would say you have the right, by the way, as a professor to advance some pretty wild ideas. You can challenge a lot. You know, I mean, people have done it, you know, sometimes, you know, go back to Galileo. But, you know, even Bertrand Russell, who was fired by City College, where I went to as an undergraduate in New York, you know, so we’ve had that. But you did nothing.
38:03.70
robert Scheer
As far as I can see, I’ve looked at everything, you know, and in our publication, robert Shearer, my son was the not a managing editor. He looked and he wrote a very good piece about it. And there’s no there there, you know. So, I mean, you did not push what one thought was the envelope, but it is evidently. So if they can go after you for this.
38:24.28
robert Scheer
Right. For daring to show up and want to raise some questions with somebody who is a what you as you describe a genocide denier, you know, and that that’s somehow creating this hostile environment and threatening the whole process and, you know, and and everything else. What they they can get anybody for anything.
38:43.64
sang kil
Yeah, I mean, they said that I caused somebody to have a heart attack by just showing up.
38:43.99
robert Scheer
know
38:47.78
sang kil
I mean, this is how bad it’s gone, you know. So, um but I just mean know want to warn faculty that, you know, this is the line machine that’s coming after us all in order to try to chill our speech and repress our freedom of association, freedom of speech, freedom, right to protest.
39:04.44
sang kil
um Unfortunately, yeah, the atmosphere is very chill. And they’s still to this date, my so my union has not put out a statement to support me at San Jose State University.
39:14.64
sang kil
The Academic Senate, the Faculty and the Academic Senate has not put out a statement to support me in my case. So, you know, unfortunately, maybe maybe the resistance is more robust on other campuses, and I’m not aware of it, but it you know it seems like the Constitution is pretty much dead at San Jose State University, in my opinion.
39:30.39
robert Scheer
Yeah, and lets so clearly what this last words, and we can end it with the, as depressing as they are are, also revealing of how frightening the current situation is.
39:42.18
robert Scheer
That’s really what we’re talking about. I mean, you are not, you know, advocating for Che Guevara at time and tell people to pick up the gun and do something. and There’s nothing of this. This is not black liberation at a time on UCLA when they said, oh, you know, these people are going too far. I mean, you, you,
39:59.90
robert Scheer
are in an orderly way trying as ah as you have a right again I have to mention this you are not fired for anything you did in the classroom and you’re teaching that’s the key here for acting for you as a member of the campus community as a citizen you know as a well i don’t know why keep saying citizen as a human being are trying to raise questions about what’s going on and then your capacity on your own time, on your own time. Walk across campus because there’s somebody speaking and you want to put some questions to them and then you do put some questions when they close the thing down.
40:35.19
robert Scheer
That’s what you’re being punished for. You’re being punished for using the town square. You’re youre youre you’re being punished for exercising your fundamental right right to free speech.
40:44.28
sang kil
Thank you.
40:45.00
robert Scheer
Yeah, that is is really what is an issue. This is not some subject about what are the limits to fair teaching so students get to hear other views and what, you know, those are important discussions.
40:56.02
robert Scheer
This has nothing to do with it. This has to, you could have been, and I don’t want to put down janitors, but you could have been working on food supply. You could have been security. You’re in on your own time.
41:06.33
robert Scheer
your own time going over, you know, and yes, to confront a speaker about a subject you think has a strong moral element. That’s the key here. I want people to understand that. And that’s what you’re fired for. And theyre all the the work you did, getting advanced degrees, studying everything, caring about students, being honored. You were honored at your university, weren’t you? I forgot.
41:29.30
robert Scheer
So…
41:29.32
sang kil
Oh, I got a lifetime achievement award for service in my 40s.
41:33.69
robert Scheer
Okay, lifetime achievement award. And they just say goodbye, you’re dust, you’re history, you’re finished. you were They silenced you, you’re in one person.
41:40.21
sang kil
Yeah. it’s the like You’re a allowed to do social justice on my campus, except for Palestine. Once you start doing pro-Palestinian social justice work, then you get fired.
41:51.26
robert Scheer
Yeah, but I want tell you something. The reason I’m um’m optimistic, that’s falling apart. as they as Every time you pick some, you know, scapegoating thing, anytime you try to make it marginalized and say, yeah, freedom is great, but not for them, whether they’re gypsies, whether they’re Jews in Germany, you know, whether they’re Palestinians in San Jose, you know, the fact of the matter is,
42:14.17
robert Scheer
the The argument is falling apart. The question is whether the goon mentality starts cracking heads and the arresting people so that arguments don’t matter. And unfortunately, we have that prospect. That’s what I see is, I think. And that’s the scary thing because they can’t win the debate.
42:32.12
robert Scheer
They can’t, you know, not on any logical, factual basis. It falls apart. And you see it with this, you know, Trump’s own counterterrorism expert saying this whole thing is bogus. All right. On that note, want to thank our executive producer, Joshua Scheer, who wrote this very good story about you, calling my attention to it. And and when you do get the results, I’d like to interview again and see what happened here.
43:00.47
robert Scheer
All right.
43:00.44
sang kil
Yeah, but I would love to share.
43:01.54
robert Scheer
Yeah.
43:01.92
sang kil
Yeah, thank you so much, Robert.
43:04.05
robert Scheer
Thank you.