Professors sue Atlanta’s Emory University over handling of Israel-Gaza protests

“Students and faculty have also protested against surveillance cameras on campus and handling of racist posts by a studen

 

(As a graduate of Emory University Law School I find the university’s behavior to be part of a tradition of repression of progressive ideas. I was told but an Assitant Dean that I was blacklisted from being recommended to law firms recruiting at Emory because I openly refused to participate in a mock trial competition where I had been assigned to argue against affirmative action when the professor who was overseeing the competition was consulting with President Reagan’s Justice Department which was working to eliminate affirmative action. I discussed it with the School’s Dean Epstein, a very clueless man who had us graduate in a downpour because of his negligence in mot moving the ceremony to our designated indoor rain location. I told the Jewish Dean that it was like asking Jewish students to defend Nazi War Criminals he countered it was more like asking Catholics to defend abortion rights. He ignorantly thought, without a factual basis that most Catholics were against abortion rights. I had moved from NYC two years earlier. I knew better. This was and is Emory excepting a few open minded professors like Tim Terrell.) John H Armwood II

Timothy Pratt

Protesters cuffed after being detained on campus of Emory University during a pro-Palestinian demonstration on 25 April 2024, in Atlanta. Photograph: Mike Stewart/AP

Atlanta’s Emory University is facing a lawsuit from three tenured professors over its handling of 2024 protests against Israel’s assault on Gaza, capping off a tumultuous end to the spring semester.

In recent months faculty and students have also demanded the removal of Flock surveillance cameras on campus, and Black law school students and others protested the school’s response to a student’s social media posts and emails that were filled with the N-word.

Emory is one of the richest private schools in the US, with the nation’s 12th-largest endowment. It is also the Atlanta metro area’s second-largest employer.

Noëlle McAfee, chair of the philosophy department and one of three plaintiffs in the civil complaint, sees the recent events at the school as connected. They reflect what is happening “mostly at public universities, but is creeping into private ones … a very dark, authoritarian turn happening around the country”, McAfee said.

The lawsuit alleges the three professors sustained wrongful arrests and prosecution after the school’s administration called Atlanta police and state troopers onto campus two years ago, brutally shutting down a protest encampment less than an hour after it began. The suit also alleges the school violated its own open expression policy.

The Guardian’s reporting on a conservative group that later targeted those who were arrested that day is named in the lawsuit.

McAfee hopes to draw attention to the school’s behavior with the complaint and help ensure the school never calls police onto the campus to quash a protest again. She says some faculty and students have never recovered from the incident. “The trauma of that day, the violence of it, are so massive and so disruptive – and the administration has taken no ownership for what they did, and provided no apology.”

Meanwhile, Emory law school expelled a student named Milano Wayne on 23 April, after months of social media posts and emails to a faculty member containing racist, misogynistic and transphobic messages – including, in an email, his intention to “stomp on n****s”.

This decision followed seven months of escalating concerns, according to Kylie Doyle, past president of the Student Bar Association. Doyle compared the school’s swift response to the April 2024 protest seeking the school’s divestment from Israel with its months long reaction to Wayne’s communications, which earlier this year had students fearing he would commit violence against members of the groups he targeted.

“When the university had students and faculty protests on campus, they were immediately arrested and shot with rubber bullets and tear gas,” Doyle said. “But when a student talks about Black people this way, it takes months for the school to respond.”

As a member of Emory’s Black Law Students Association, Greear Webb was one of about 10 students who met on 13 April with law school dean Richard Freer and other members of the school’s administration.

In the meeting, Freer expressed concerns “about the current political climate, and that the university didn’t want to do anything to put Emory on the administration’s college hit list”, Webb told the Guardian.

Webb noted that Milano was allowed to stay enrolled and take classes remotely for months while the school investigated his behavior. “It seemed like they were giving privileges to someone with racist, violent ideologies,” he said.

After the 13 April meeting, he said, the students felt “disappointed and frustrated”.

They would like to see the student code of conduct be revised to name hate speech and related threats. Also, echoing McAfee, he said, “We’re asking for an apology, a specific acknowledgment that [Milano’s] behavior impacted Black, women and LGBTQ+ students.”

As for Atlanta-based surveillance tech company Flock Safety, a group of students says it has gathered more than a thousand student and faculty signatures opposing the company’s license plate reader cameras on campus. They cite concerns such as a lack of transparent communication from the school about their use and ways in which information from the cameras can wind up in the hands of federal agencies such as ICE.

Under the name DeFlock Emory Coalition, the group published an editorial on 29 April in the Emory Wheel, a student newspaper, calling on the school to “prepare for a mass mobilization should Emory ignore our demands”.

“We demand that our university be the institution it claims to be: one that defends inquiry, dissent and the people who make this community possible,” the editorial concludes.

Laura Diamond, spokesperson for Emory, declined to answer questions from the Guardian about faculty and students seeking apologies and the school’s concerns about being targeted by the Trump administration – and instead sent previously-released statements.

One statement said the lawsuit is “without merit” and that “Emory acts appropriately and responsibly to keep our community safe from threats of harm”. Another said “[t]here is no place in our university for harassment, threats, and bullying. We condemn the vile and hateful language used by the individual in the emails and social media posts.” A third said the school is “taking additional steps to further review how data is shared” from Flock cameras.

Emil’ Keme, an Indigenous K’iche’ Maya scholar, is also a plaintiff on the complaint over the 2024 protest. As with the DeFlock students, he noted the school’s behavior differs from its promoted image.

The swift clampdown on protest and brutal arrests, he said, “went against the principles the school defends: search for knowledge, dialogue and so on”. Since then, he said, “students are afraid” to protest. “This ties into what’s happening nationally,” he said. “It’s a bleak climate.”

McAfee said students now “have to weigh whether it’s safe to demonstrate about something they believe in. There’s a loss of trust.” One student told her: “I don’t want to go to jail – I want to go to med school,” in a conversation about the subject.

Stefano Harvey, a professor at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne, Germany, who has studied higher education in the US, said that universities under the Trump administration have been emboldened “to act more like corporations”.

“It’s capitalism trying to get universities in order … [they’re] selling study, learning and community – advertisements that suck you in,” he said. “But then, in each of these cases [at Emory], unfortunately people have to be disabused of these ideas. It’s a very sobering moment.”