“I Will Not Trade Speaking Out for Palestine for My Safety”: We Stand with Professor Mohja Kahf

Across the US, professors—like Palestine Legal client Mohja Kahf—are continuing to speak out against Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians, in defiance of racist attacks and repression.

Professor Mohja Kahf is a distinguished professor of comparative literature and Middle East studies at the University of Arkansas (UofA) and an award-winning Syrian-American poet.

Since December 2025, Professor Kahf has been subjected to a bogus antisemitism investigation by UofA. The complaint? She has two pro-Palestinian posters on her office door (one of which has been there since 2007).

“I drew the cartoon ‘I'm Not A Terrorist’ in 2005, and Professor Kahf posted it in 2007. Recently, Mohja's university investigated my cartoon and a Palestine poster. While I'm tickled that my cartoon has been so carefully scrutinized, the University seems to have no understanding of political humor or of our Constitution's First Amendment,” said Lebanese-American cartoonist Jennifer Camper.

Last week, UofA informed Professor Kahf that their investigation (citing a Washington Post article) found her posters including one with the phrase “From the River to the Sea” to be “discriminatory” and ordered their removal from her office door. She was told there was no appeal process.

This is blatant anti-Palestinian racism, and unconstitutional. Federal appeals courts, including a January 22, 2026, decision from the First Circuit in StandWithUs v MIT, have affirmed that pro-Palestinian phrases such as “From the River to the Sea” are protected speech and cannot be censored by those conflating those phrases with antisemitism.

Photo by Whit Pruitt courtesy of UA Relations Office

But Professor Kahf refuses to be harassed into silence. Even after being subjected to “a bewildering, Orwellian interrogation, against typical procedure, draining valuable research time and causing needless distress,” she says. “I will not trade speaking out for Palestine for my safety. This is something that is part of my core identity.”

Professor Kahf's case is not isolated. In a recent report called “Discriminating against Dissent: the Weaponizing of Civil Rights Law to Repress Campus Speech on Palestine,” the AAUP and MESA published the first systematic study of data on the weaponization of antisemitism claims in higher education.

The report analyzes an alarming, ongoing trend: bogus antisemitism investigations have become a primary tool to restrict pro-Palestine speech on campuses.

Since October 2023, pro-Israel organizations have driven the surge in antisemitism investigations. Of the investigations analyzed in the AAUP-MESA report, pro-Israel organizations were behind 78 percent of the complaints.

We stand with professors like Mohja Kahf, Michel DeGraff, Andrea Brower, Judith Norman and many others facing such bogus investigations for their principled scholarship and activism.

Contact Palestine Legal if you are facing a bogus antisemitism investigation for pro-Palestinian speech on campus. We've got your back.