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Last April, after the death toll in Gaza climbed to 34,000 and Israel carried out its second raid on Al-Shifa Hospital, Erin Donevan started wearing a small circular pin that said \u201cFree Palestine\u201d to the Catholic school where she taught ninth-grade English. Bishop O\u2019Dowd High School in Oakland touts<\/a>\u00a0its commitment to \u201cenriching society\u201d and \u201csocial justice,\u201d and, according to Donevan, teachers sometimes wore pins or hung posters in their classrooms for other causes, like Black Lives Matter, support for Ukraine, and LGBTQ rights. By wearing a pin for Palestine, Donevan told me, she hoped that she could signal to students that she was an adult they could talk to if they were upset or confused. She told me, \u201cI was thinking about my students and knowing they all have access to the same Internet I do, and they are seeing these incredibly traumatizing things.\u201d<\/p>\n On April 25, Donevan received an e-mail from the school\u2019s principal, Doug Evans, asking her to \u201cplease refrain\u201d from wearing the pin on campus, citing a complaint from a student\u2019s family. Donevan declined, writing back that she believes the pin is in line with the school\u2019s own stated commitments to dignity and diversity. \u201cI can no longer listen to land acknowledgments at assemblies or cheer along with our O\u2019Dowd elders as they celebrate the Ohlone Shellmound\u2019s rightful return to Indigenous stewards without insisting on wearing this pin,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n A few days later, they met in person, and Evans asked her to remove the pin again, but she again declined. In a May 9 e-mail, the principal wrote, \u201cIt is very clear that your failure to follow my instructions as the principal of our school regarding not wearing the pin in your classroom or during instruction is insubordination.\u201d<\/p>\n Donevan described the decision to keep wearing the pin as \u201csuper small\u201d but personally meaningful. \u201cIn the grander scheme of things, there are teachers who can\u2019t teach anymore, because their schools have been destroyed, whose students have been martyred,\u201d she explained over the phone. \u201cIt felt wild to be in a space with these young people, be in an assembly or mass, and look around and see such silence.\u201d<\/p>\n The back and forth continued until June 4, when she attended a meeting that included Evans and other school officials. There Donevan was told to remove her pin or face termination, and she again declined. She received her termination letter the next day, and joined the growing ranks of workers who were retaliated against for their Gaza solidarity advocacy.<\/p>\n It is difficult to know exactly how large this club is; many (but not all) of those facing retaliation are not in unions or not in touch with organizations that are tracking this. However, anecdotal evidence and available data sources indicate that the number is high, with workers fired or punished for expressing pro-Palestinian sentiment both within the workplace and outside of it. Alleged retaliation and repression has\u00a0torn through<\/a>\u00a0higher education, affecting both\u00a0tenured<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0adjunct<\/a>\u00a0faculty, as well as\u00a0graduate<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0undergraduate<\/a>\u00a0workers. But it has also hit other fields, with workers raising concerns about retaliation in\u00a0K-12 education<\/a>,\u00a0healthcare<\/a>, the\u00a0tech industry<\/a>, the\u00a0service industry<\/a>,\u00a0cultural\u00a0<\/a>organizations,\u00a0Jewish institutions<\/a>, and numerous\u00a0other sectors<\/a>. Workers are losing their jobs, but also losing professional opportunities or simply living in a climate where fear of retaliation leads to self-censorship. \u201cIt was bad before October 7, but it\u2019s been exponentially larger since then,\u201d Alek Felstiner, a labor lawyer, told me over the phone.<\/p>\n Some groups have tried to quantify this phenomenon. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, an advocacy organization, said in its latest\u00a0civil rights report<\/a>\u00a0that in 2023 the organization received 1,201 complaints about employment discrimination related to Islamophobia. Farah Afify, research and advocacy coordinator for the organization, told me this marks a 113 percent increase in employment discrimination complaints compared to 2022. \u201cComplaints include instances in which employees are seeking religious accommodations but not getting them,\u201d Afify explained. \u201cBut since October 7, 2023, it has included a huge number of complaints where employees are sharing something in support of Palestine, either at work or on social media, and facing disciplinary measures as a result.\u201d<\/p>\n In May, the advocacy and litigation organization Palestine Legal published a\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0about the crackdown on Palestine solidarity in the United States. It found that \u201cthe wave of politically motivated repression in the workplace has been the most severe in the country since at least the Vietnam War.\u201d Between October 2023 and December 2023, Palestine Legal received 383 reports that \u201cinvolved employment concerns, including 124 individuals who had already been terminated from their positions,\u201d the report states.<\/p>\n This number has only increased since publication: A media contact for Palestine Legal told me that since January 1, the group has had 604 intakes involving employment-related issues. Palestine Legal does not specialize in employment cases, so this is almost certainly a fraction of the number of people seeking support for employment discrimination.<\/p>\n Felstiner, an attorney for the Levy Ratner law firm, is part of Palestine Legal\u2019s referral network. He said, \u201cI\u2019ve been in the Palestine Legal referral network for at least five years, and the volume now is 10 times. It\u2019s a completely different order of magnitude, and that\u2019s only people who were in a position where they were able to contact the organization for help.\u201d<\/p>\n Nine in 10 workers in the United States are not covered by union contracts, and for most of them, the default framework is \u201cat will\u201d employment. This means their bosses can fire them for any reason as long as that reason is not illegal. Labor law says employers are not supposed to fire someone for racist reasons, for example, or for engaging in protected concerted activity, like when a group of workers discusses hazardous working conditions. But in reality, at-will status gives bosses considerable discretion and power. Public-sector workers have\u00a0more<\/a>\u00a0speech protections than private-sector workers, and for both, unions offer significant protection. But no one is immune, and workers across the board, including those with unions, have alleged retaliation.<\/p>\n In some cases, workers have\u00a0filed lawsuits<\/a>, charging that the retaliation was illegal. Felstiner told me, \u201cMany of the people I\u2019ve consulted with would not have strong legal claims due to being private employees who were employed at-will and were fired based on political speech outside the workplace. Some have stronger claims based on their racial, ethnic, or religious identity, or because they are public employees with First Amendment rights.\u201d<\/p>\n But advocates and some labor leaders say that, whether or not retaliation is legal under US labor law, it is dangerous and morally reprehensible as a growing trend. For Carl Rosen, the president of the United Electrical Workers, a labor union of 30,000 members, a greater principle is at stake. \u201cDemocracy in our country is diminished when individuals can\u2019t speak out on an issue that matters to them because their employer wants to dictate what their speech is going to be,\u201d he told me.<\/p>\n In the case of Donevan, whose position was nonunion, the principal cited various justifications for why she should remove her pin: the \u201ccontroversial issues\u201d section of the employee handbook, the school dress code, and a rule that \u201cthe prestige of the teacher\u2019s position will not be used to advocate partisan opinions.\u201d He also said other students and families had complained. In each case, Donevan said, she did not have her questions answered and was not convinced by the administration\u2019s reasoning. (Evans did not respond to a request to comment on a detailed list of allegations.) When Donevan received her termination letter, dated June 5, it was blunt: \u201cAs a private school, Bishop O\u2019Dowd High School has significant discretion to regulate employee speech.\u201d<\/p>\n I asked her why it felt important to continue wearing the pin. \u201cOn a very zoomed-in, individual level, it was feeling really my whole humanity was being impacted by action in my personal life,\u201d she said. Donevan was going to protests and participating in direct actions to oppose US support for Israel. \u201cAnd then I would go to work, and it was like it wasn\u2019t even happening,\u201d she said. \u201cYou\u2019re driving to work and check your phone and see the most horrific thing you can imagine seeing, and then cry a little, then turn it off and go work in a school where it felt like nobody was talking about it.\u201d<\/p>\n But not all retaliation is firing; there are many other ways workers can be penalized for their pro-Palestine positions. In May, the National Writers Union released a\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0documenting 44 cases of alleged retaliation in the media industry between October 7, 2023, and February 1, 2024, together affecting more than 100 people. This included terminations, but also cases where awards were rescinded, assignments were restricted or canceled, workers pressured to resign or subjected to online harassment.<\/p>\n One case in Minneapolis shows how alleged retaliation can take many forms. Christine Harb, a Palestinian American final-year medical resident in family medicine, was invited by Asian, Muslim, and LGBTQ collectives of staff members at Hennepin Healthcare, a public hospital in Minneapolis, to present a private lecture on the social determinants of health in Palestine. The event and topic, scheduled for June 7, had been approved by executive leadership and the Health Equity Department, organizers told me.<\/p>\n Just days before the event, when Harb was almost done with her PowerPoint presentation, Hennepin Healthcare abruptly\u2014and indefinitely\u2014postponed the talk \u201cwith no conversation with me,\u201d Harb said. Even though she does not work for Hennepin Healthcare, Harb told me that the loss of a professional opportunity felt retaliatory. Harb previously lived in the West Bank, and has a grandmother, brother, and cousins who live there. Friends of hers have lost family members in Israel\u2019s current operations in Gaza. She found the postponement, which was effectively a cancellation, disrespectful and insulting.<\/p>\n Organizers say that Dr. Nneka Sederstrom, chief health equity officer for Hennepin Healthcare, justified the cancellation, in part, by arguing that the event should focus solely on \u201cPalestinian culture.\u201d Eiko Mizushima, an occupational therapist who helped organize the event,\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0in an op-ed for the\u00a0Sahan Journal<\/em>\u00a0that \u201cHennepin Healthcare has mandated that if Dr. Harb, or any other Palestinian guest lecturer, were invited back to speak that there would be new guidelines to censor their topics and PowerPoint presentations in order to maintain a sole focus on \u2018cultural celebration.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n But Yosef Amrami, a psychologist for Hennepin Healthcare who was among those who invited Harb, told me, \u201cIt\u2019s not really clear what they mean by focusing on culture. It\u2019s hard to separate the culture of an occupied people from the actual context. It\u2019s like being told you can\u2019t discuss slavery or Jim Crow when talking about African American history and culture.\u201d<\/p>\n As a result, several staff members quit the collectives that had done the organizing for it. The cancellation became the subject of a\u00a0petition<\/a>\u00a0and at least\u00a0one demonstration<\/a>\u00a0by Healthcare Workers for Palestine at the State Capitol in St. Paul.<\/p>\n I asked Hennepin Healthcare\u2019s media team to explain why the event was canceled and to respond to workers\u2019 concerns that it constituted retaliation. It sent me a statement from Dr. Sederstrom: \u201cThere is a persistent and false narrative suggesting that Hennepin Healthcare has banned discussions about Palestine or has not addressed the crisis in Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAt Hennepin Healthcare, we believe there is no single \u2018right\u2019 way to show support or solidarity,\u201d the statement continues. \u201cWe are saddened by the notion that hosting specific people or sharing specific messages is the only valid way to stand in solidarity. Activism takes many forms, and we all have the ability to contribute in ways that align with our own values.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOn November 13, 2023, we issued an internal statement reaffirming our commitment to healing, condemning terrorism in all its forms, and standing in solidarity with healthcare workers in the Middle East,\u201d the statement adds.<\/p>\n But Harb rejected these remarks. \u201cIt\u2019s a demonstration of how healthcare institutions are complicit, and in some ways have abandoned healthcare colleagues who are actively being killed because of their commitment to the Hippocratic Oath,\u201d she said. \u201cAmerican healthcare institutions are very much playing an important role in silencing any attempt to shed light on what\u2019s happening to healthcare workers, specifically in Palestine.\u201d<\/p>\n Amrami, whose position is nonunion, said, \u201cthere are still negative feelings and a sense of moral injury because of the event being canceled.\u201d<\/p>\n For one staffer, the lingering effects were so negative she decided to leave her position. Mizushima, who was not represented by a union, resigned from her job in September \u201cin part\u201d because of the ordeal, she said. The cancellation of the event, and subsequent blowback, contributed to a hostile work environment, she told me over the phone. \u201cTo see the equity department picking and choosing who they stand up for with the cancellation of the event, and how they treated us and Dr. Harb, that\u2019s the beginning of the fall of any equity department.\u201d<\/p>\n The United States is a major supplier of weapons to Israel, and is also a key political backer and funder: It has spent\u00a0at least $22.76 billion<\/a>\u00a0on \u201cIsrael\u2019s military operations and related U.S. operations in the region,\u201d according to Brown University\u2019s Costs of War project. This political reality has been accompanied\u2014and enabled\u2014by a\u00a0jingoistic<\/a>\u00a0media climate. Some employers who retaliate cite the need to avoid controversy or politically charged positions.<\/p>\n In May, labor and delivery nurse Hesen Jabr was given an award for her excellent care to patients who suffer perinatal loss. Jabr, an employee of New York University\u2019s Langone hospital, is Palestinian American, and in her award acceptance\u00a0speech<\/a>, she made a connection between the suffering of the bereaved mothers she works with and the suffering of bereaved mothers in Gaza. \u201cIt pains me to see the women from my country going through unimaginable losses themselves during the current genocide in Gaza,\u201d she said, adding: \u201cEven though I can\u2019t hold their hands and comfort them as they grieve their unborn children and the children they have lost during this genocide, I hope to keep making them proud as I keep representing them here at NYU.\u201d<\/p>\n Jabr was\u00a0fired the next day<\/a>. A spokesman for NYU Langone, Steve Ritea, told the press that \u201cHesen Jabr was warned in December, following a previous incident, not to bring her views on this divisive and charged issue into the workplace.\u201d (Jabr is\u00a0accusing<\/a>\u00a0the hospital of discrimination and filing a lawsuit.)<\/p>\n Worker advocates say there are also structural factors behind the apparent increase in workplace retaliation for pro-Palestine speech. \u201cWhat\u2019s different after October 7,\u201d Felstiner, the labor lawyer, said, \u201cis that people are getting identified as attending a rally or posting something on Twitter or Instagram and then having organizations target them. And they often get summarily fired immediately, within a day or so of their employer getting contacted. At the scale it\u2019s happening, that\u2019s new.\u201d<\/p>\n Advocates have also raised concerns about a different tool employed by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). On November 9, 2023, seven legal organizations, including the Center for Constitutional Rights and National Lawyers Guild, wrote a\u00a0letter<\/a>\u00a0to \u201cworkplace leaders\u201d sounding the alarm about the ADL\u2019s campaign to get companies to sign a \u201cWorkplace Pledge to Fight Antisemitism.\u201d Fighting antisemitism and other bigotry is critical, the legal organizations say, but the ADL wrongly conflates criticism of Israeli state policy with antisemitism. The letter urges workplace leaders to \u201creject attempts to push a distorted definition of antisemitism that aims to censor criticism of Israel and advocacy for Palestinian rights by falsely labeling it anti-Jewish.\u201d (The ADL\u00a0was recently removed<\/a>\u00a0from Wikipedia\u2019s list of credible sources, because editors accused the organization of \u201coften acting as a pro-Israel lobbying organization.\u201d)<\/p>\n The letter warns that \u201cadvocacy for Palestinian rights is being punished on a mass scale, and is causing a discriminatory and hostile environment for individuals who are connected to and are morally compelled to speak out about the current crisis in Gaza and throughout Palestine.\u201d<\/p>\n But it\u2019s not just organizations. In March, the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce issued a\u00a0subpoena<\/a>\u00a0to the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys\u2013UAW Local 2325 after the union adopted a pro-Palestine resolution. \u201cThis inquiry is a McCarthyite silencing tactic meant to chastise lawyers and legal services workers for their protected political speech and intimidate other unions from speaking out,\u201d Lupe Aguirre, senior staff attorney at the New York Civil Liberties Union, said in a\u00a0press statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n Parts of organized labor have been pushing back against these attacks on speech\u2014and on US support for Israel. This summer, UAW Local 4811, which represents graduate students, organized a strike to protest the University of California school system\u2019s crackdown on pro-Palestine protests, and\u00a0tens of thousands<\/a>\u00a0of academic workers at six campuses participated. In September, Cornell University took disciplinary action against graduate student Momodou Taal for his participation in a Gaza solidarity demonstration. When it became clear that this discipline would likely result in Taal\u2019s deportation, his union, Cornell Graduate Students United-UE,\u00a0fought back<\/a>, and has\u00a0so far been able to stave off his deportation<\/a>. And in July, unions representing nearly half of all unionized members\u00a0called for<\/a>\u00a0a US arms embargo on Israel, pursuant to a permanent ceasefire.<\/p>\n It is difficult to know what impact the incoming Trump administration will have on workplace retaliation, but the climate could get worse. Trump openly\u00a0opposes<\/a>\u00a0unions and worker power. And the conservative Heritage Foundation, which enjoyed close ties to the first Trump administration, has already drafted a plan to try to crush the Palestine solidarity movement. Called\u00a0Project Esther<\/a>, the proposal advances \u201ca legal strategy to suppress speech favorable to Palestinians or critical of the U.S.-Israel relationship, by employing counterterrorism laws to suppress what would otherwise be protected speech,\u201d according to\u00a0reporting<\/a>\u00a0from\u00a0Drop Site News<\/em>, citing legal experts.<\/p>\n Those who are dealing with the fallout from retaliation, meanwhile, have their lives to manage. Donevan has been teaching for about a decade, and worked for Bishop O\u2019Dowd High School for two school years before she was fired. She described her ordeal as stressful. \u201cAs soon as I got the e-mail where they used the word \u2018insubordination,\u2019 I felt like I was playing a game of chicken,\u201d she said. \u201cI knew they didn\u2019t want to fire me, because it would reveal they were taking a pro-Israel stance.\u201d<\/p>\n Donevan said the school had a double standard. At morning prayer and at assemblies, when the topic of Ukraine and Russia came up, they \u201cnamed violence against Ukraine,\u201d she said. But when Gaza was mentioned, \u201cthey would say \u2018the conflict in the Middle East,\u2019 and never name Palestine.\u201d She underscored, \u201cI can\u2019t imagine they would have complained if I had worn something pro-Ukrainian.\u201d<\/p>\n Donevan is unemployed and focused on parenting her three toddlers. She said she is applying to \u201ca bunch of education or education-adjacent roles, and interested in returning to special ed.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cReally I\u2019m just trying to find work that\u2019s aligned with my values\u2014or at least not actively working against the values I hold.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\nWidespread retaliation<\/h4>\n
Professional\u00a0<\/strong>repercussions<\/h4>\n
Jingoism and targeting<\/h4>\n