Tulane University terminated an academic director this summer after the syllabus she’d helped create for an infectious disease class was rejected by a newly hired instructor because it included an academic article about a polio outbreak in Gaza.
Some say that the incident is yet another glimpse of the tense climate experienced on local and national campuses by people who support Palestine.
The situation also raises questions about free speech on the nation’s campuses. “It is important that faculty members and other instructors are able to select and teach pedagogically relevant material in class, even when that material is potentially upsetting or controversial for students,” said Graham Piro, a fellow with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a nonprofit civil liberties group that defends free speech on college campuses.
In the current climate, some institutions are feeling pressured to violate student and faculty First Amendment rights to avoid federal investigations, Piro said. But FIRE encourages them to withstand those pressures. “We urge departments and universities to stand by scholars when they come under fire for the material they teach, or for their statements outside the classroom on matters of public concern,” he said. “Universities must remember their legal obligations under the First Amendment.”
Though at first the matter seemed headed for a mere warning, Tulane ended up terminating Samia Rahman, academic programs director for the university’s pre-college program, on July 28. Along with the termination, Tulane altered the course’s syllabus, removing the article, a Harvard School of Public Health discussion about the resurgence of polio in Gaza.
Earlier this year, in anticipation of this summer’s Tulane’s pre-college courses – short classes taken by high school students during the summer – Rahman, who’d worked for the Pre-College Program for more than a year, had developed the syllabus for the course, “Infectious Disease: Epidemics and Public Health,” in collaboration with at least two faculty members from Tulane’s School of Public Health.
In the class, students examined “the factors leading to outbreaks of disease and the impact that infectious diseases have on our society,” according to Tulane’s online course summary. On the third day of the five-day course, students would learn how armed conflict can contribute to the outbreak of epidemics.
The students were slated to read and discuss the article, “Polio in Gaza: Experts explain the outbreak and the public health response.”
The brief article, comprised of excerpts from a panel discussion about polio vaccination efforts by American, British, and Israeli health and humanitarian experts, was originally published by the Harvard School of Public Health.
To Rahman, 38, the article wasn’t controversial. “For me, there’s an assumption I make that if … you work in medicine or if you work in health,” you’d be interested in an article about stepped-up polio vaccinations in a war zone, she said.
Since the article had also been approved by Tulane public health faculty, Rahman was taken aback when Atara Jaffe, hired as a temporary instructor, refused to teach it, she said.
Harvard academic director Mary Bassett, a contributor to the Harvard public health piece, was also surprised to hear of Jaffe’s discomfort with the article. “I just really don’t understand what would make the person uneasy about it, except that it referenced the situation in Gaza,” Bassett said.
To Bassett, the article seemed relevant to a public health course about epidemics. The situation, she said, is a marked and teachable example of how war leads to epidemics: before 2024, Gaza had not seen a polio case for decades, she said. The disease has grave, lifelong risks such as paralysis, but is also “entirely vaccine-preventable,” she said, noting that polio only reappeared after the conflict began, and primarily threatens unvaccinated infants exposed through contaminated water and sanitary systems damaged by war.
Discomfort with reference to ceasefire
Shortly before Tulane’s pre-college summer programming began, both Jaffe and another instructor who’d been hired to teach the infectious disease course said in a virtual meeting with Rahman and a co-manager that they were uncomfortable leading the in-class discussion for the article about polio in Gaza.
Though Rahman explained they would strictly be addressing public health, not politics, Rahman says Jaffe told her she felt the article was blaming Israel because it referred to the need for a ceasefire. Jaffe and the other instructor asked to instead teach an article about post-COVID mental health on that day of class.
Jaffe declined to speak with The Lens when reached for comment.
It’s unclear why the article’s mention of a ceasefire was objectionable. Even in May and June, as world policymakers squabbled over Israel’s blockade of aid and food intended for Gaza, a ceasefire was discussed as a neutral solution. Many of the world’s leading public health organizations, including Doctors Without Borders, MedGlobal, and the World Health Organization, had called for a ceasefire by the end of last year. Israel’s actions in Gaza have been widely characterized by experts, humanitarian organizations, and a UN inquiry as genocide, though the article did not use that word.
Within the Tulane School of Public Health, Rahman and her colleagues listened to the instructors’ complaint and offered them the choice to assign one of two articles as homework: the article about polio or another about a cholera epidemic in Sudan exacerbated by civil war. Ultimately, the instructors were given the option to assign either article as homework, or lead a discussion.
But in the meantime, Jaffe found two TikToks Rahman had made. After watching videos, she would file an equal opportunity complaint.
Federal pressure on schools
Rahman’s termination comes during a time when many U.S. universities feel under fire, as the Trump administration targets diversity-equity initiatives and programs it characterizes as antisemitic or “race-exclusionary.” Bassett’s employer, Harvard, is said to be in stalled discussions over a $500 million settlement after the Trump administration froze billions in federal funds designated for the university. The Trump administration has also pushed to deport non-citizen students who express support for Palestine.
In March, Tulane was one of 60 schools named by the Trump administration as being under investigation by the Department of Education for alleged antisemitic discrimination. Many institutions are pushing back on what they say is the coercive use of public funds to assert more federal control over universities. In April, a letter opposing the Trump administration’s punitive actions against universities garnered 400 signatures from university and college presidents and educational leaders.
The Trump administration has particularly targeted universities that saw pro-Palestine protests. Last April, a high-profile, pro-Palestine encampment on Tulane’s campus was forcibly dismantled by officers from the New Orleans Police Department and Louisiana State Police in SWAT gear, who arrested 14 protesters. Tulane suspended seven students from the camp.
Rahman’s termination came the month after Tulane dropped its controversial academic charges, from a separate incident, against seven students who participated in an off-campus protest held after ICE and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security detained Palestinian student activist Mahmoud Khalil.
Because Rahman continued to make social media posts about her opposition to Israel’s assault on Gaza throughout Tulane’s investigation, she wonders whether she was terminated because of her political beliefs.
Tulane is still facing a Title VI investigation over allegations of antisemitism, opened in December 2023 with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights after a student filed a complaint following an on-campus protest where someone tried to set fire to an Israeli flag, which then led to a physical altercation. Title VI investigations pursue discrimination complaints based on race, color, or national origin within programs that receive federal assistance.
The following year, in July 2024, an attorney with Most & Associates filed another Title VI complaint against Tulane, this time on behalf of students alleging a pattern of anti-Palestinian discrimination.
The complaint was filed on behalf of Tulane Arabic Club, Tulane Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and four SDS members. It describes multiple cases of alleged discrimination by Tulane faculty: in one incident, a chemistry professor referred to Palestinians as terrorists in front of her class, which included a Palestinian student. The student reported the remarks, but Tulane “refused to investigate it as an incident of anti-Palestinian racism.”
Faculty have also forced students to remove their keffiyeh scarves – cultural symbols of Palestine – and called campus police on an individual wearing a keffiyeh, calling it a “terrorist scarf,” according to the Most & Associates complaint.
Tulane has made no statements and taken no public action to resolve those matters.
In response to queries, Tulane spokesman Michael Strecker provided a statement about anti-discrimination trainings and programming at the university.
“We have mandatory training for employees that is designed to prevent discrimination – including antisemitism and Islamophobia – based on shared ancestry,” Strecker wrote. “We also have related and ongoing educational efforts, partnerships and programming, including our annual Islamophobia Awareness Week and Antisemitism Awareness Week.”
TikToks lead to complaint
Rahman, who holds a master’s in education from Columbia University and has worked in education for over a decade, occasionally posts about current events on social media. This summer, after Jaffe objected to the syllabus, Rahman posted two videos on TikTok, critiquing the objections without naming either instructor.
Rahman acknowledges that the social media posts, which have been viewed by The Lens, showed “a lack of good leadership judgment.”
In one video, she tells viewers: “I don’t know if I should feel sorry for Zionists, if I should feel angry, if I should feel sad, because they are so brainwashed that they cannot look at a neutral article talking about public health concerns and not get triggered that Israel is getting blamed.” She later deleted the videos.
But Jaffe found the videos and opened an equal opportunity case against Rahman, alleging that Rahman “discriminated against and harassed Atara Jaffe based on her religion, national origin and shared ancestry, unreasonably interfering with or limiting participation, and creating a hostile work environment,” per a Tulane Human Resources document. Rahman does not know Jaffe’s religion, but says she had the impression Jaffe was a white American, and that Jaffe later mentioned she was from South Africa. Jaffe has earned degrees in both California and Cape Town, South Africa, and is currently on staff with Tulane’s Psychology Department.
After hearing about the complaint from her supervisor and a human resources representative, Rahman offered to apologize. Jaffe instead chose to pursue the complaint. The other instructor didn’t join the complaint. Rahman later gave a statement to an equal opportunity investigator at Tulane.
Almost two months later, the Tulane Equal Opportunity and Resolution Management office notified Rahman that an investigation had determined that she’d violated the university’s “religion and shared ancestry” discrimination policy but was cleared of the alleged discrimination based on “national origin.”
Tulane terminated Rahman soon afterward.
The polio article was meanwhile dropped from the syllabus. Tulane’s spokesperson did not respond to questions about who made that decision, but Shanna Harper, Tulane’s director of summer programs, informed Rahman by text that given the investigation, “the University has recommended pulling” the article.
Rahman is disturbed by what she sees as academic censorship.
“Removing this material sends a chilling message to students and faculty about whose suffering is acceptable to examine in an academic context and whose is not,” she wrote in an email to Robin Forman, Tulane’s senior vice president for academic affairs and provost.
Tulane’s spokesman did not give details to The Lens about why the university had pulled the article from the syllabus.
Importance of polio article
In fairly antiseptic terms, the Harvard School of Public Health article focuses on how conditions in Gaza created a “perfect storm” for the return of polio, and the logistical difficulties of administering polio vaccines there.
“We had a target of vaccinating 640,000 children, or 90% of all children under 10 in the region,” said Sam Rose, the senior deputy director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) Affairs in Gaza, as he described the planned response to a confirmed case of polio in a 10-month-old, partially paralyzed infant.
“I’ve been on the ground for these campaigns, which took place during agreed-upon pauses in fighting,” Rose said. “However, these pauses did not cover the entire geographical area. In addition, northern Gaza has been cut off since October of last year [2023], making the campaign challenging in that region.”
It’s impossible to talk about the resurgence of the disease without talking about the destruction of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, including water and sanitation systems, said Bassett, who directs the Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard School of Public Health. That widespread damage can swiftly affect public-health outcomes, she said, noting that, before the bombing began, Gaza had “a much higher vaccination coverage rate than we had in New York state.”
Within the article, the word “ceasefire” does appear twice – both in comments made by Israeli health workers.
First, Guy Shalev, the Israeli executive director of Physicians for Human Rights Israel, is quoted as saying, “Even as we continue to hope for a ceasefire, the social determinants of health and infrastructure in Gaza are still issues.”
Later in the piece, Bassett also quotes an Israeli pediatrician, who says that, to stop polio, “the prescription is ceasefire, vaccines, and good public health conditions.”
Bassett, an academic director, was surprised that Rahman’s TikTok posts about the article’s critics led to her termination.
While criticizing Zionism publicly may have been reckless, Bassett said, “I was surprised that you’d lose your job over it.”
