Many scholars committed to Palestinian liberation can no longer do their jobs. That’s because many of the professors most supportive of Palestine don’t have jobs anymore.

This is nowhere truer than in the Gaza Strip — where all 12 universities have been reduced to rubble, and more than 90 professors have been reported killed during Israel’s assault on the territory. The gravity of what United Nations experts warn could amount to U.S.-backed “scholasticide” has no equivalent on American soil.

Yet Israel’s attempted eradication of intellectual life in Gaza echoes far beyond the territory, with U.S. universities ensuring that some professors vocal in their support of Palestine can no longer do their jobs either.

Since the beginning of Israel’s war on Gaza, academics in fields including politics, sociology, Japanese literature, public health, Latin American and Caribbean studies, Middle East and African studies, mathematics, education, and more have been fired, suspended, or removed from the classroom for pro-Palestine, anti-Israel speech.

These educators have little in common. They live in different cities and states and hail from different countries. Some have been teaching in their institutions for decades, some were newly hired. Some taught at private universities, others public. They have varying degrees of job security, from a tenured professor to the most precarious adjunct contracts. And they are racially, ethnically, religiously, age, and gender diverse.

What they share is that, in recent months, they have all staked out positions in favor of Palestinian freedom — positions that lead them to be targeted by pro-Israel groups.

From campus to campus, professors have defended students’ right to protest, but when scholars themselves espouse support for Palestine and opposition to the Israeli state, professional consequences have frequently been grave.

There’s no official tally of the number of academic workers who have lost jobs or faced suspension over support for Palestine, not least because higher education in this country is disarticulated, often privatized, and reliant on short-term contract labor. By and large, professors facing job loss and suspensions over Palestine have brought these allegations into public view by speaking out themselves. Scores of academics across the country are likely under investigation, and many stand to have their contracts quietly expire without renewals.

The Intercept spoke with more than a dozen professors, both adjuncts and those with tenure, whose employment has been imperiled by their pro-Palestine speech. Of the professors I talked to, all were at one point under investigation since October 7; some of the probes closed without findings of wrongdoing. Several faced varying degrees of suspensions, and four of the professors lost their jobs or expect to lose them next week when the semester ends without the renewal of their contracts.

The interviews, including those with campus labor activists and academic associations, revealed a pattern of politically motivated repression where campaigns by pro-Israel advocates can mar the careers of academics because of comments that express outrage at Israel’s ongoing occupation and its war in Gaza.

“The bulk of our inquiries, even our cases, have to do with violations of due process related to non-reappointment, to dismissal, to tenure award, et cetera,” said Anita Levy, senior program officer with the American Association of University Professors. Levy told me that the nonprofit organization, which advocates for faculty rights and academic freedom, currently has opened five cases in recent months related to pro-Palestinian speech.

“When we get five or six of these cases in a two-month period, where there are suspensions related to social media posts over a current event, shall we say, the war in Gaza, that is unusual,” she said. “Of the cases that we’ve opened, none of them have been related to pro-Israel speech. All of them have been in support of the Palestinian cause.”

We are at the dawn of a “new McCarthyism,” Levy said. “This may be the tip of the iceberg.”

Institutions are well positioned to eliminate political dissenters from their payrolls under the misleading banner of protecting Jewish people, primed by heightened Republican attacks on higher education.

“This is beyond the new McCarthyism. This has to deal fundamentally with Islamophobia, anti-Muslim racism, anti-Arab racism, anti-Palestinian racism,” said Mohamed Abdou, who is a visiting professor in Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African studies at Columbia University — that is, until this semester ends.

Columbia President Minouche Shafik announced that the university was cutting ties with Abdou during a congressional hearing last month about antisemitism on campus. Abdou was one of five professors named by the school administrator but the only one without the relative protection of tenure. His one-year contract ends this month.

“What she effectively did was blacklist me globally,” Abdou told me of Shafik’s testimony. (Columbia did not respond to a request for comment.)

Abdou said he was smeared for words in a Facebook post on October 11 that were taken dramatically out of context. The activist-scholar was........

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