Academic institutions are increasingly yielding to political pressures, eroding the very freedoms they claim to protect. At MIT, my attempt to teach a “Special Topics” course on language, linguistics, and decolonization in Haiti and Palestine/Israel was censored and delegitimized. This personal experience reflects a broader crisis in higher education and in the nation—one where free inquiry is stifled by fear, surveillance, suspension, expulsion, firing, visa revocation, disappearance, deportation, and worse.

A case study in the erosion of academic freedom

At MIT, I have witnessed firsthand how institutional priorities shift under the weight of political pressures and personal allegiances. My proposal for a course that critically engages via language and linguistics with the realities of settler colonialism vs. decolonization was not simply met with skepticism; it was censored and actively surveilled, doxed, and it is still being delegitimized. My experience is not an isolated incident, but part of a larger, systemic issue that permeates education across the United States. It is a symptom of what I have come to understand as the “Palestine exception,” where conversations surrounding Israel/Palestine are subjected to unique levels of scrutiny and suppression, from academic units, to students’ newspapers and faculty newsletters, to Executive Orders and Homeland Security. 

But my story is just one small window into this repression. The experiences of students at MIT further illuminate the growing authoritarianism in academia. Across campus, I have seen students rallying for justice in Palestine face relentless disciplining, brutal policing, surveillance, and, overall, an atmosphere of intimidation. This is not just a localized issue at MIT; it reflects the emergence of what some have called the “surveillance university,” where dissenting voices are systematically monitored and silenced. The rise of this surveillance culture is deeply intertwined with broader political and legal developments. Institutions like MIT are increasingly governed by fears of legal repercussions, such as Title VI litigation, which viciously frames criticism of Israel as a form of antisemitism. In this environment, administrators, even apparently well-meaning faculty colleagues such as those on the MIT Faculty Newsletter (FNL) editorial board and in the leadership of MIT’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP@MIT), prioritize risk management over academic integrity, choosing to appease powerful political interests (citing, say, “statements that could be perceived as libels” or the priority of “collective academic freedom” over “individual academic freedom”) rather than uphold the principles of free inquiry. The result is a chilling effect on academic discourse, where controversial—but necessary—conversations are shut down before they even begin.

The personal is political

At its core, fascism thrives on the suppression of dissent and the monopolization of knowledge production as self-serving “truth.” By silencing critical discussions, particularly those that challenge hegemonic narratives, institutions like MIT contribute to the erosion of democracy itself. This trend is not new, but it is accelerating. From Columbia University, Harvard, Northwestern, and beyond, we have seen how institutions deploy administrative tools to curtail academic freedom in order to please the bully in chief in the White House. The justification is often couched in the language of neutrality or safety, but the reality is far more insidious: these policies disproportionately target marginalized and racialized voices, particularly those advocating for Palestinian rights and against the ongoing genocide. The implications of these actions extend far beyond the confines of any single institution. By restricting discourse on Israel/Palestine, universities are not only failing their students and faculty but are also abandoning their commitment to intellectual rigor and social justice. In doing so, they risk becoming complicit in the very authoritarianism they purport to resist.

My personal journey at MIT has become emblematic of the institution’s troubling descent into authoritarian practices, now abetted by groups like the MIT Faculty Newsletter and the MIT chapter of the American Association of University Professors—bodies I once trusted to defend academic freedom. In November 2023, I was verbally attacked during a faculty meeting simply for expressing concern about Palestinians trapped in a Gaza hospital under Israeli bombardment. A month later, the insults escalated in my own department, MIT Linguistics & Philosophy, after I drew historical parallels between Nazi rhetoric justifying the Holocaust and Zionist language rationalizing the genocide of Palestinians—an academically grounded comparison. My reference to “Jewish donors” in a letter to former UPenn President Liz Magill was also twisted to accuse me of antisemitism. The repression peaked in Spring 2024 when MIT Linguistics rejected my proposed course on language and decolonization in Haiti, Palestine, and Israel. Citing vague concerns about “fit,” “expertise,” and “outsourcing,” the decision was a thinly veiled attempt to suppress scholarship critical of Israel. Particularly disturbing was the role of the section head who had previously called me “out of your fucking mind” and accused me of antisemitism in response to my political stances on Palestine. He participated in the unprecedented ad hoc committee that blocked the course. A subsequent “independent review” initiated by MIT’s Vice-Provost for Faculty offered no transparency: I was neither interviewed nor told who was reviewing the case—procedures that seem to me more fitting of a kangaroo court than a university.

This lack of transparency and due process exemplifies the institutional mechanisms used to silence dissenting voices at MIT. Despite these obstacles, I managed to transform the proposed course into a People’s Seminar / Speaker series in Fall 2024, supported by MIT’s #MindHandHeart office, Women’s & Gender Studies and an anonymous donor. 

In September 2024, in a clear act of retaliation, the SHASS Dean withheld my annual raise, citing “misconduct” after I spoke out against the censorship of my course. Then in November, I was abruptly removed without due process from my department of over 28 years and reassigned to a nebulous “Faculty-at-Large” role, then even my access to the MIT Linguistics Facebook page was blocked—revealing how hollow MIT’s supposed commitment to academic freedom and free speech has become.

In November 2024, the People’s Seminar became the target of coordinated online attacks led by a self-identified Zionist former MIT student— with previous appearances in Congress and now affiliated with the Manhattan Institute—who smeared both me and the seminar on X/Twitter. After I corrected his false claims, he escalated by sending me a “Cease and desist” letter, copying MIT administrators. Rather than defending academic freedom, the Dean of MIT’s School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS) asked me not to identify the student in class, which I agreed to. Yet soon after, the situation intensified: an undercover journalist from the Daily Wire infiltrated the seminar and published a fake-news article amplified by the same student—whose anonymity I had protected. Their online campaign triggered such severe threats that MIT Police requested extra patrols around my home by Cambridge Police.

The rejection of my Fall 2024 course on “Language and Linguistics for Decolonization and Liberation in Haiti, Palestine and Israel” stands in stark contrast to my prior teaching experiences at MIT. The 2021 seminar “Linguistics and Social Justice” was approved with minimal scrutiny, as a “Special Seminar” course to “cover topics not offered in the regular curriculum.” Recurring courses like “Creole languages & Caribbean identities” and “Black Matters: Introduction to Black Studies” have been recognized as legitimate linguistics offerings. In 2021, a one-sentence description for the Special Topics seminar was approved the same day it was submitted, and guest lectures for that seminar were advertised in the MIT Linguistics newsletter without issue—18 guest speakers exploring the use of language, linguistics and education for decolonization and liberation in 13 communities, from the Caribbean to New Zealand. Yet in 2024, when the proposed “Special Topics” included Palestine and Israel, the process was abruptly politicized: my proposal was subjected to unprecedented review, denied legitimacy as a linguistics course, and even excluded from departmental announcements. At the time of this writing, in April 2025, my MIT Linguistics colleagues are still rejecting “Language and linguistics for decolonization and liberation in Haiti, Palestine and Israel” as a linguistics course. The only clear difference is the inclusion of Palestine/Israel—revealing a troubling “Palestine Exception” to MIT’s standards for academic freedom.

Meanwhile, pro-Palestine student activists at MIT have faced doxing, surveillance, and institutional punishment—part of a broader nationwide crackdown. Across the U.S., students, staff and faculty who speak out for Palestine are being targeted and turned over, often with the complicity of Zionist students, parents, administrators and U.S.-backed doxing platforms aligned with Israeli interests. This wave of repression, including masked agents arresting dissenting scholars, is disturbingly reminiscent of the Duvalier dictatorship in my native Haiti—though uniquely shaped by the U.S.–Israel alliance.

The political is personal

The AAUP and its chapters, alongside faculty newsletters, are meant to be bulwarks of academic freedom. Yet both the MIT Chapter of the AAUP (AAUP@MIT) and the MIT Faculty Newsletter (FNL) seem to have abandoned these principles when it comes to Palestine. This “Palestine Exception” has allowed the suppression of pro-Palestinian speech to flourish even within institutions explicitly charged with protecting open inquiry.

This betrayal became personal when I submitted an earlier version of this essay to the FNL. The piece linked rising fascism to anti-Palestinian racism and to the weaponization of antisemitism accusations, as in the saga of the rejection of my course proposal. Though I complied with requests to remove allegedly libelous content, publication was indefinitely stalled under vague concerns about unidentified “statements that could be perceived as libels” and the formation of a “subcommittee” for “exploring a pathway for possible publication of an edited version of the piece in a future issue.” The president of AAUP@MIT, as FNL co-chair (!), participated in the review process, despite a clear conflict of interest given my critique of AAUP@MIT’s silence in the face of attacks on my academic freedom.

One of AAUP@MIT’s rationalizations—that MIT Linguistics’ “collective academic freedom” trumps my “individual academic freedom” —echoes dangerous precedents, from the McCarthy era to today. This logic was used to justify the suppression of my elective course, even as I was denied the opportunity to teach in the very area for which the MIT Linguistics head had congratulated me in 2022 when I was awarded “the highest honor in the field of linguistics.”

That two supposedly independent forums—AAUP@MIT and FNL—enabled such suppression speaks volumes about how deeply the “Palestine Exception” has taken root. In a recent FNL article, “Eyes on the Price,” defending democracy and academic freedom, the editors rightly wrote: “Silence is not neutrality; it is complicity.” Yet they remain silent about the most chilling threat to academic freedom today: the weaponization of antisemitism accusations to erase the words “Palestine” and “Genocide” from campus discourse. This silence contradicts the AAUP National Organization’s warning against the control of “what is thought, said, taught, and researched” in ways that are “antithetical to the educational mission of a university and the democratic values upon which it rests.” The silence AAUP@MIT and FNL is not just hypocrisy—it is complicity in a broader erosion of academic freedom across American higher education.

Resisting the rise of fascism in academia

In July 2024, MIT alumnus Netanyahu called anti-genocide students “Iran’s useful idiots” before a cheering Congress. Meanwhile, groups like Hillel International praised MIT at the Knesset as a model of its on-campus lobby for shaping U.S. discourse on Gaza. My experience, like that of students at MIT, is not an anomaly but part of a wider crisis: U.S. universities are compromising their core mission by surrendering to political pressure and legal threats. This is not just a lapse in leadership—it is active complicity in rising authoritarianism, as dissent is punished and power consolidated.

We must reject the Anti-Defamation League’s misuse of statistics to label Israel’s critics as antisemites. We must join Fairness in Accuracy & Reporting (FAIR) in denouncing both antisemitism and its cynical weaponization, which erases Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism. 

As I’ve argued elsewhere, Orwellian linguistic trumperies now conflate legitimate criticism of Israel with hate speech, shielding genocide from scrutiny. When Israeli leaders claim that “only the horses are uninvolved” and describe all Gazans—even children who allegedly “brought it upon themselves”—as legitimate targets, and U.S. politicians repeat these talking points, we must ask: who really benefits from the suppression of speech on Palestine?

At MIT, the deliberate erasure of Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism for increasing membership in AAUP@MIT and MITACF is a sad reminder of MIT President Sally Kornbluth’s selective denouncement of hate. These erasures echo a broader pattern in which “neutrality” is weaponized to protect the powerful and punish the vulnerable. This silence emboldens the very forces that have made it unsafe to teach, speak, or organize around Palestine

As historian Ilan Pappé reminded us at MIT: “Academic courage should not be an oxymoron.” We must defend the principles that define the academy—academic freedom and freedom of expression, intellectual honesty, social justice, etc. The future of higher education and of democracy itself, depends on our refusal to be silenced.

The stakes are high as Columbia and Harvard have already succumbed to Trump’s bulldozing free speech, academic freedom, diversity, equity, inclusion and more—and the target list keeps increasing. Project 2025 epitomizes rising authoritarianism and endangers marginalized communities and higher education. As Amir Goldberg and Barbara Risman remind us, “Trump does not give a damn about Jews: Campus antisemitism is real, but the president’s vandalistic attack isn’t about justice or discrimination.” We must resist these attacks with courage. Now is not the time for silence.

Yes, resistance is possible. As we confront this rising tide of fascism, let us remember that our greatest weapon is, not silence or keeping our heads down as we thread the needle, but the collective power of our voices—without any fear of being accused of “libels,” “antisemitism” and other false accusations. By documenting our personal experiences facing fascism and by analyzing the historical underpinnings of said fascism, we can begin to challenge the structures that enable this suppression. And we must address the larger forces that threaten, not only Jews and Palestinians, but all disenfranchised groups. We must stand in solidarity with those whom Frantz Fanon called “The Wretched of the Earth.” 

And we must hold ourselves and our institutions accountable for the roles we play in perpetuating injustice. As we think of MIT’s mottos, let’s commit ourselves, indeed, to advancing knowledge in #MITMindHandHeart mode toward a #BetterWorld—for real.

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