San José State University has suspended a Justice Studies professor who’s also faculty adviser for the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.
A university official wrote to Sang Hea Kil Friday telling her she was on paid suspension and asking her to turn in her university keys and access card, according to a copy of the letter Kil provided Inside Higher Ed. A university spokesperson confirmed the letter’s authenticity Wednesday but didn’t clarify the exact reasons for Kil’s suspension, saying “San José State does not comment on personnel matters.”
Kil told Inside Higher Ed that she doesn’t know how to rebut “these vagaries.” She said “I think my greatest sadness is that they immediately cut me off from my students.”
The letter said the suspension is for multiple alleged offenses, including “reported repeated violations— despite notice—of university policies,” “encouraging students to violate university policies” and targeting a colleague or group of colleagues “for engaging in their work duties by publicly posting their picture and/or group description with inflammatory comments and creating a risk of harm to them.”
Kil provided Inside Higher Ed an April 25 email from the university saying she was under investigation after “it was reported … you engaged in behavior that disrupted the university’s business operations and encouraged students to do the same,” during a protest in Sweeney Hall. That appears to be referencing the intense protest in February that she and Students for Justice in Palestine were involved in, objecting to a visit by the Jewish studies director at another California State University campus who had said what’s happening in Gaza isn’t a genocide. A more recent “amended notice of investigation” that Kil provided also mentions a May 8 protest “on and around the Smith and Carlos Lawn” on the campus.
Kil said the university appears to be selectively using time, place and manner restrictions to restrict her First Amendment rights. She encouraged her students to continue to “protest this genocide.”
