EXCLUSIVE: Northwestern Suspends Journalism Professor Steven Thrasher After Gaza Solidarity Protest

this is democracy Now democracynow.org the warrant peace report I'm Amy Goodman in New York joined with Juan Gonzalez in Chicago as students return to school for the fall we spend the rest of the hour looking at how University administrators continue to crack down on Gaza solidarity student protests and professors an oped in The Chronicle of Higher Education called it a quote a salt on the truth we begin with a guest who last joined us in May after he was attacked by name during a congressional hearing about Pro Palestine protests on college campuses as Republican Congress member Jim Banks grilled Northwestern University president Michael shill he singled out Northwestern University journalism Professor Steven Thrasher who' been to the Gaza solidarity encampments at Northwestern in Chicago and other schools as a professor and as a journalist stepen Thrasher who's one of the the goons in the photo behind me he's a professor of Journalism at Northwestern he and several of your faculty members locked arms they scuffled with police officers blocked the police officers on your campus from doing their job do they continue to teach students at Northwestern University after this embarrassing incident so I will not comment on individual faculty members nor on matters decision and your decision alone to allow those professors to continue to teach students on your campus we believe in due process at the univer at Northwestern University you believe in D process except for the decision that you made about Coach uh Fitzgerald we followed the contract have your process we had an investigation but I don't I'm not going to go on and on about that after this Congressional hearing Northwestern filed charges against Professor Steven Thrasher for allegedly obstructing police at the encampment which Cook County Prosecutors dropped since then Professor Thrasher has continued to speak out but students at Northwestern will not see him in their classrooms as they return to campus because he's been suspended with pay as Northwestern says he's under investigation he's joining us today in New York to publicly speak about this for the first time Steven Thrasher um is a uh an acclaimed journalist an author of The viral underclass the human toll when inequality and disease Collide his forthcoming book is called the overseer class representation as repression his POS he is at the medil school of Journalism at Northwestern University chair of social justice and Reporting Professor Thrasher welcome back to democracy now why don't you explain in your own words what has happened to you since the Gaza protests thanks for having me Amy so uh at the Gau encampment as you saw in the video I was one of a number of professors and graduate students who uh surrounded our students to try to make sure that nobody hurt them uh the day before there had been horrific violence at several other universities where we' seen that students had been brutally hurt by University Police uh and I was on Democracy Now and um did some therapy and thought things were uh kind of going okay by the time that I uh finished the school year and plan to go offline for the summer to work on my next book I was out of the country for the whole summer and actually the day that I uh had left the United States and and uh landed in Europe I found out that the Northwestern police wanted to talk to me and eventually found out that I was one of four people that they're pressing charges against now uh it was really disturbing this was many months after the fact uh like many other situations and other campuses most of the four of all four of us had been very outspoken who were being charged and most of us were lgbtq people uh and we found out that they're pressing these charges and the state of Illinois had thrown out all kinds of other cases they threw out our case as well but the day that I found out that the state of Illinois was was throwing out the charges I also found out that my fall classes had been cancelled and that I was not going to be allowed to teach in the fall pending an investigation um so this was of course very upsetting particularly and and this is something I'm hoping that Professor Franky might might speak about as well um particularly because my classes were very lgbtq classes I'm the Daniel rberg chair of social justice and Reporting with a focus on the lgbtq community and I also was teaching a class on lgbtq reporing methods and viruses and viral media um so my classes were canceled I'm the only person who teaches lgbtq classes I had to let uh eight different people know who I had contracted to be a grading assistant to come in as guest speakers to do tours who were all lgbtq journalists and Alum I had to let them note that they wouldn't be working as well and of course it was a huge disappointment to our lgbtq students um it was really odd to hear president shill talk about due process because I've received no due process and being taken out of the classes I'm still being paid uh but I did not get the fairo process I was uh told that I would not be allowed until investigations in into complaints against me uh to intemperate social media usage and into my uh beliefs around uh objectivity and journalism had been investigated and this is all very strange because I'm going through the 10-year process my mid 10e review had just been done last year like all faculty it was put off for a year because of covid on my timeline uh but it got a glowing mid 10e review and my endowed chair the Daniel rberg chair of social justice uh in reporting had just been renewed in October uh the university has praised and done a lot of PR about the work that I do around uh objectivity and journalism and social justice journalism they put me on the cover of the alumni magazine just the year before what they don't like is that I am now applying the same social justice journalism principles that I've applied to race and that I've applied to lgbtq people to co and HIV that I was now applying those to Palestine and so they don't like that and that the uh Congress is putting pressure on them to put pressure on me they're uh aiding that so it's a really really dangerous and sad situation I'll be fine personally no matter what happen but the idea that a social justice journalism professorship cannot talk about one of the most important social justice measures uh issues of our time uh the genocide in Gaza that a journalism Professor can't talk about a issue and a situation where 171 of our colleagues have been murdered uh journalists in Gaza uh that we can't talk about these things that we can't take a stand for free expression and the safety of our students on campus as they're becoming more militarized all of this is of course extremely upsetting and Steve Thrasher what are the specific uh charges against you and uh and also what has been the reaction of your fellow faculty members I really haven't talked I mean this is the first time that I'm really talking about it publicly I made a commitment to myself that um I would finish my next book and not get derailed from that and I finish it on Tuesday so so now I'm talking to you on Thursday um I don't want to get too much into the specifics but one of them is called complaints against you and this is a very vague thing that's come up uh all over the country that they'll say that there are complaints and the and the complaints which I've seen which there's no merit to uh those complaints are very much at odds with what was written up for me in my mid 10e review uh in which my mid 10e review uh Dean Whitaker wrote that I go above and beyond the call for my students and my owed share uh which was also renewed I got um very specific praise about being a leader in the field of Journalism education and I've received uh awards for my mentorship of Northwestern students so none of that really Bears uh much on the complaints um also I was uh told about uh my use of social media which is something that I have done uh with a lot of passion at times but with uh part of my journalism practice to speak about issues um uh that are important to me and in the Northwestern University magazine article that was uh about me when my book came out they actually highlighted in a very positive way the way that I use social media again I don't think they like me using the tools that I've used to talk about HIV lgbtq issues and uh race issues to be applying it towards Goa because all of the uh the complaints about my social media are about interactions that I've had with people about Palestine and the third one is uh an incredibly ridiculous thing to be complaining about it's about my commitment to the idea of objectivity and journalism and this is something I've talked about on democracy now before it was part of what my application and my job talk when I was hired as the the Daniel rberg chair of social justice in reporting uh and it's been a Cornerstone of the books I teach like Lewis Wallace's the view from somewhere guests I've brought into campus part of my practice is that I don't believe in the idea of faux objectivity in journalism I do believe in rigor and putting a lot of effort into your work and that view viewers listeners and readers have a right to know the positionality of the person reporting the news to them because that gives them a frame of reference for how they can think about it critically um but this idea that that somehow uh I am not uh objective enough when my job is focusing on social justice and journalism and lgbtq issues uh and when I had just been uh very glowingly um reappointed for doing my job and that the university has very much embraced my book and many of the articles I've written that come from a position of social justice uh is is really a ridiculous thing the field of Journalism education like all academic disciplines has ways that people argue about the central uh tenants of that discipline one of them is objectivity people have different feelings about it I've made mine clear um but this is not something that should be you know any way disqualifying for someone who has a professorship that is focused on social justice issues and before we turn to another professor this one at uh Columbia University a school of law in New York Stephen Thrasher your message to the returning academic Community to professors and students alike my uh message is we have nothing to be ashamed of we have nothing to be afraid of we are doing something that is very important and back in October I'm not yet tenured I'm filing for tenure and I plan to file for tenure on schedule uh this fall because I think that my record uh deserves to let me have that um that hearing um but back in October after everything started getting really really bad in Gaza I made a video uh say asking you know should untenured professors like myself talk about this and I said absolutely because it's a moral issue if you become tenure trying to stay silenc through this stuff you'll uh become the kind of Professor you don't want to be and even though I have been uh I've been physically beaten up by the the police of my University I've been interrogated front of Congress I've been threatened with Jail uh and now I am suspended with pay and not allowed to teach um this is the work that we need to do in these very difficult moments this is a genocide this is something that is uh having an enormous impact not just on many of us in the United States but on 600,000 students who've lost their um who have lost their ability to get to school in Gaza on 14,000 children who've been killed in Gaza uh and so what we have to do as Educators is teach and even if I don't I hope I go back into the classroom at Northwestern but even if I don't uh maybe the teaching that I have to do is what I'm doing right now maybe all of us as Educators right now the most important teaching we can do is to teach our students that there are things that are morally important that we have to speak about and that we have to show our students that they are worth taking the consequences But ultimately we we we are going to be okay uh because what we are doing is something that is righteous stepen rasher is chair of social justice and Reporting at the medil school of Journalism at Northwestern University in Chicago author of the viral underclass