Free speech vs. hate speech: Professor tests the limits

By Jason Fridge, Paige Bowman Assistant Podcast Editor, Assistant Managing Editor

Is hate speech protected by academic freedom? Former Cabrini professor Kareem Tannous is suing the school to find out. Cabrini hired Dr. Kareem Tannous as an assistant business professor on June 26, 2020. Tannous, a Palestinian-American who grew up in the Philadelphia area, was hired on a tenure track contract to teach business, economics, finance, and accounting.

During Cabrini’s annual evaluation of tenure-track professors, Tannous’ contract was renewed for the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 school years. However, while he was under contract as a professor, Tannous was active on his personal Twitter account (@GenerousAdvice) criticizing the state of Israel, the ideology of Zionism, and calling Ashkenazi Jewish people “fake Jews.”

A series of tweets between March and May 2022 even made the false claim that Hitler was Jewish, that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky is a “Jew war criminal,” that Jewish people are responsible for the Holocaust, antisemitism, hate crimes, and more. On February 2, 2022, Cabrini received a letter from The Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia calling out Dr. Tannous’ Twitter account and flagging his tweets as antisemitic. The letter specifically references Tannous’ tweets on International Holocaust Remembrance Day. This letter and an article from stopantisemitism.org labeling Tannous as their “Antisemite of the Week” were sent to Cabrini’s administration in July 2022.

According to Tannous’ lawsuit acquired by The Loquitur, interim President Helen Drinan subsequently called for a Zoom meeting with Tannous after receiving this notice.

The July 20, 2022 meeting included President Drinan, Cabrini’s human resources director, and a representative of Palestine Legal, Amal Thabateh. After the meeting, Tannous received a letter from Cabrini on August 5, 2022, saying his employment at the university was terminated as of August 12, 2022. Tannous’ firing comes during a time when the Anti-Defamation League, ADL, reported 3,697 antisemitic incidents throughout the U.S. in 2022. This marked a 36% increase from 2021 and is the highest number ADL recorded since 1979. Pennsylvania accounted for 114 of these 2022 incidents. Dr. Ruta Clair chairs Cabrini’s psychology department and serves as faculty advisor for the Jewish Student Union. She added insight into how Cabrini’s Jewish community is impacted by these recent trends.

“There is a cultural kind of comfort with ideas that can be viewed as threatening to the Jewish community,” Clair said. “There’s comfort with antisemitism, unfortunately.”

The line for academic freedom

A March Philadelphia Inquirer article claimed Tannous planned to file a lawsuit against Cabrini for wrongful termination. In the article, Tannous claimed his personal tweets were separate from his teaching and were an expression of his freedom of speech.

“I’m just reporting and showing the world and speaking about the atrocities going on,” Tannous told the Inquirer. “I wasn’t teaching the history of the Middle East, I was teaching accounting.” But if his political beliefs didn’t enter the classroom, they were prevalent online.

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