Latest news with #UmaymahMohammad
Middle East Eye
4 days ago
- Health
- Middle East Eye
Medical student suing Emory University for discrimination says her suspension is 'professional death sentence'
When Umaymah Mohammad embarked on pursuing a medical degree and a doctoral degree in sociology at Emory University in 2019, her dream was to become both a primary care physician and professor specialising in structural violence within the healthcare system. But her dream was cut short after she was suspended from Emory's School of Medicine last year for expressing concern about a faculty member who volunteered as a reserve medic for Israel during its war on Gaza and returned to teach at the school in Atlanta, Georgia. She never named the faculty member in her appearance on Democracy Now! Mohammad is currently suspended from Emory's medical department until the end of the 2027-2028 academic year and will be under probation until her delayed graduation date of 2029. She is believed to be the first medical student to be suspended for protesting against the war on Gaza. More damaging, however, is the fact that the suspension is on her permanent record, which she says will prohibit her from practising medicine, a blow to her long-cherished ambitions. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters It is under this context that Mohammad has filed a lawsuit on 4 August in a federal court in the state of Georgia, against Emory University, the university's board of trustees and Dr John William Eley, the dean of Emory's School of Medicine, alleging discrimination under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, denial of procedural due process, and emotional affliction. The lawsuit was filed on her behalf jointly by the Muslim civil rights group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and counsel Jonathan Wallace. Emory University declined to speak to Middle East Eye for this article, citing pending litigation. Holding institutions accountable Mohammad told MEE that the suspension had academic, material and emotional ramifications on her life. She said that both her mental and physical health had been impacted. She felt anxious when going to campus and was afraid for her physical safety after some students joked about killing her. 'You wake up with severe anxiety knowing you have to go back to the same place that you were doxed at, to go back to an institution that has IDF soldiers walking around as faculty members, and to see the same deans who suspended you,' she said, referring to members of the Israeli army when citing the term "IDF". 'It's difficult to articulate that level of anxiety. You have to attend class. You're put on academic probation if you don't. At the same time, you're terrified to show up.' She said there was a point when she was receiving so many threats, she was genuinely worried that something would happen to her when she went to class. She recounted how some of her friends heard some students joking about killing her on campus, which she said didn't feel too far-fetched given the political climate. 'It's difficult to articulate that level of anxiety. You have to attend class. You're put on academic probation if you don't. At the same time, you're terrified to show up' - Umaymah Mohammad 'Due to the level of violence we saw at the encampments and the violence we have seen against faculty and students who supported Palestine, that reality did not seem far away,' she added. Academically, she said she has fallen behind on her sociology PhD because of the six-month disciplinary procedure she had undergone. But the ramifications for her ambitions to practise medicine were a bigger hurdle. 'Materially, a suspension for a medical student goes on your permanent record, which ultimately is a professional death sentence for someone who seeks to be a physician," Mohammad said. She believes the decision behind the suspension mimics 'the same eliminationist and racist logic' that Israel is using to bomb Palestinians indiscriminately. 'The silencing and repressing of Palestinian voices in the US, particularly of those of us trying to be future healthcare providers, is a clear extension of the genocide and the genocidal logic driving Israel as well. Since they cannot bomb us in our homes, they instead attempt to destroy our careers and our livelihoods." She added that no career, job or degree was worth her silence and apathy in the face of the 'unjust loss' of another person's life. 'Although the suspension has severe material consequences to my future, we have to keep it in perspective that no one is losing, sacrificing or suffering more than the people of Gaza,' she said. 'For me, the focus still remains on ending the genocide and holding our institutions accountable - including healthcare institutions'. Ultimately, she said the lawsuit is an escalation of her resistance against institutions complicit in what has been classified as a genocide by several countries, international rights groups and experts. 'I continue to choose to escalate despite the threats of violence, despite the mental and physical impacts it takes on me, because it is my moral responsibility as a future care provider to speak out against one of the worst atrocities we have seen in the 21st century,' she added. Over 61,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began in October 2023, most of them women and children, while over 150,000 have been wounded. Disciplinary process Mohammad said the disciplinary process against her started in July 2024. She said the charges made against her would then change with no explanation, including accusations of inciting violence at one point, and she was given two options: admit guilt or undergo a hearing. Columbia University suspends or expels almost 80 students for pro-Palestine protest Read More » After a hearing in November, the committee decided to suspend her in December. According to the hearing committee, she was found to have violated 'the standards and expectations of the medical profession' based on their belief that her statement accusing a faculty member of 'aiding and abetting a genocide' through his service in the Israeli army was untruthful. The committee also said she had violated the expectations of professional communication and demeanour, as well as the expectation of respect for the rights of others. Just three weeks ago, she received another conduct charge from the medical school for repeating the same comments she made in the Democracy Now! interview. 'It's because I haven't stopped talking about Emory's complicity in the genocide since then. We are hoping the Title VI lawsuit pushes Emory to pause the new conduct procedure, because my suspension letter basically promises that they will expel me if I receive another conduct charge. 'If they don't stop in light of the lawsuit, then I do actually expect to be expelled from the medical school in the coming months or weeks'. 'I will never stop' Mohammad's Title VI complaint is not the first to be filed against Emory University. After CAIR-Georgia and Palestine Legal filed a Title VI civil rights complaint demanding an investigation into the hostile environment and anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab and anti-Muslim discrimination at the institution, the university entered into an agreement with the US Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights (OCR) in January this year. In a letter to university president Gregory Fenves, the OCR stated that 'gratuitous violence of law enforcement activity' on the campus 'may have created a hostile environment within the campus community for Palestinian, Arab, or Muslim University members and those perceived to have associated with them'. In April 2024, police fired rubber bullets and used teargas on students after they set up an encampment in solidarity with Palestine and against Atlanta's public safety training centre - known as Cop City. The police also carried out violent arrests of 28 students and faculty members. 'Israel cannot commit this genocide without the consent and the enablement of US healthcare institutions, which includes their medical schools' - Umaymah Mohammad Speaking about Mohammad's case, CAIR-Georgia's staff attorney, Keon Grant, said that the university was trying 'to quell pro-Palestinian advocacy', the very reason that the organisation had filed a Title VI complaint with the Department of Education in 2023. 'This lawsuit on behalf of Ms. Mohammad challenges not only the latest incident in their well-documented history of discriminatory treatment toward Palestinian students and their advocacy, but an intensification of this behaviour - not only ignoring outside pleas for justice but also disregarding their own internal policies in pursuit of silencing pro-Palestinian advocacy, as well as criticism of Emory University's own shortcomings and institutional biases,' Grant told MEE. Speaking about her comments on Democracy Now!, Mohammad said her concerns were around the faculty member serving in a combat unit and viewing another group of people as 'subhuman'. She explained how the faculty member previously served in the Israeli army, and that on his physician profile, it says that he's a doctor with military combat experience. 'That's military combat experience against a population living under apartheid for 75 years,' she added. 'It's especially infuriating that they would come after a student for saying, 'Hey, if a physician believes that some lives are not equal to others, what does this mean for patients here in Atlanta? If physicians can look at Palestinians as subhuman, as deserving of living under apartheid, what are they seeing when they see black, brown and indigenous patients here in Atlanta or at Emory?' That's the concern I was trying to raise in that interview.' Mohammad expressed concern about faculty publishing articles justifying the bombing of hospitals. 'Israel cannot commit this genocide without the consent and the enablement of US healthcare institutions, which includes their medical schools.' She said her academic research for her PhD is about how healthcare workers should resist structural violence as a form of preventative health care. But regardless of her legal battle, she plans to continue organising. 'I will never stop speaking the truth in the face of violence and injustice,' she said. Mohammad 's commitment to organising for pro-Palestine advocacy predates medical school and will remain a constant feature in her life, she said. 'My commitment to end structural violence and to end the colonisation of Palestine has never been predicated on having an MD or a PhD.' 'We do this work for our communities and for justice. That's not something Emory can take away from me,' she said.
The Guardian
6 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Palestinian-American medical student sues Emory University over suspension
Umaymah Mohammad, perhaps the only student in the US to be suspended from medical school for remarks about Israel and Gaza, has filed a federal lawsuit against Atlanta's Emory University, alleging discrimination under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, as well as additional complaints under state law. The lawsuit, filed on Monday morning in federal district court on Mohammad's behalf by the Council on Islamic-American Relations in Georgia (Cair-Ga), centers on Emory's alleged 'intentional discrimination and retaliation' during disciplinary proceedings against the medical-sociology dual degree student last year. It names the university, its board of trustees and John William Eley, a dean at the medical school, as defendants. It has been filed in pursuit of 'accountability and justice … [and] has potential repercussions for how student activists have been treated over the last two years in this country', said Azka Mahmood, executive director of Cair-Ga. If successful, the lawsuit could lead to 'stopping disciplinary proceedings for protected expression – and that this becomes more of a policy moving forward' – both at Emory and elsewhere, said Keon Grant, one of the Cair-Ga attorneys who filed the complaint. The school declined to provide comment to the Guardian on pending litigation. The suit alleges that the school's disciplinary response to remarks Mohammad made on the news show Democracy Now! in April 2024 showed unequal, discriminatory treatment. On the program, Mohammad spoke about the climate on campus for protesters – including at Emory, where police used tasers on students the day before during a protest against Israel's ongoing assault on Gaza. She expressed concern about an unnamed Emory medical school professor who returned from volunteering as a medic in the Israeli military and was 'now back at Emory so-called 'teaching' medical students and residents how to take care of patients'. The investigation and November hearing were both 'plagued by procedural irregularities, such as pressuring Plaintiff to admit guilt, altering charges, manipulating deadlines, disregarding institutional policies, and imposing disproportionate sanctions', according to Monday's lawsuit. Still, Emory found that Mohammad 'violated 'the standards and expectations of the medical profession'', according to the lawsuit, and suspended her from medical school for one year, pushing her graduation to 2029. Mohammad's appeal of the suspension was denied. Both Mahmood and Grant said they knew of no other medical school student suspended for speech on Israel and Gaza. The lawsuit notes that Emory's own committee on free expression defended Mohammad's speech as protected by the school's own policies, only to be ignored by the medical school. It also points to a settlement the school entered into with the Department of Education's office of civil rights in the first few weeks of the Trump administration, in response to a Title VI complaint filed directly with the department last year. Former president Joe Biden's outgoing civil rights investigators found that Emory 'may have contributed to and at a minimum appears to have failed to respond promptly or effectively to a hostile environment based on race and national origin, including shared Palestinian, Muslim, and/or Arab ancestry'. This shows the school 'was aware of systemic issues in how Palestinian and Arab students were treated', the lawsuit asserts. Sign up to This Week in Trumpland A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration after newsletter promotion Mohammad was recently notified that an additional complaint had been filed about remarks she allegedly made on Israel and Palestine. The school has not clarified the issue, but last year's disciplinary proceedings also included placing her on probation until graduation – meaning an additional complaint may be grounds for expulsion, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit comes at a time when the current administration is wielding Title VI almost exclusively as a tool to allege antisemitism on high-profile US campuses, as seen in the 30 June announcement finding Harvard guilty of 'acting with deliberate indifference towards harassment of Jewish and Israeli students by other students and faculty from October 7, 2023, through the present'. Though not as high profile as Harvard, Emory has an endowment of $11bn – the 11th-highest in the US, according to the Atlanta Business Chronicle. 'I definitely think the new Title VI world we're living in is much more challenging,' Grant said. 'Still, it's an important tool – not only to seek relief, but if no Title VI complaints were filed, it would lead to a kind of erasure.' The law, which prohibits a recipient of federal financial assistance from discriminating on the basis of race, color or national origin, 'is now being weaponized to target student activism [on behalf of Palestine]', said Mahmood. 'Still, you have to [have] faith in the federal courts and the constitution – you have to give this fight your all, to get justice – and pull all the levers this great country gives us.'
Middle East Eye
24-03-2025
- Politics
- Middle East Eye
Palestinian-American student suspended for revealing professor was medic in Israeli army
When 28-year-old Umaymah Mohammad gave an interview to Democracy Now! during the student encampment for Gaza at Emory University in 2024, she believed, like any other student enrolled there, that she was protected by the institution's policy on free expression. But according to a report in The Guardian published on Monday, Mohammad - who is obtaining a sociology PhD and a medical degree at the same time - was suspended seven months later. In that interview, Mohammad referred to, but did not name, a professor among the medical faculty who had returned from being a volunteer medic for the Israeli forces, in effect questioning how the university can reconcile the professor's academic position with his role in an army that had killed tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza. The professor 'participated in aiding and abetting a genocide, in aiding and abetting the destruction of the healthcare system in Gaza and the murder of over 400 healthcare workers, and is now back at Emory so-called 'teaching' medical students and residents how to take care of patients', Mohammad said. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters The professor filed a complaint, saying he did not feel safe, and demanded that the university investigate Mohammad. At that point, in April, Emory had already made headlines around the country for its swift and violent crackdown on pro-Palestine student protests, with police using stun guns, tear gas grenades, and rubber bullets on campus. In July, the university said it found Mohammad had violated the medical school's code of conduct because she disparaged an individual in her television interview. A number of people interjected, including Ilya Nemenman, the chair of Emory's committee for open expression, and George Shepherd, a law professor and president of Emory's faculty senate. But an associate dean at Emory insisted that Mohammad either accept the investigation's results and face the consequences or attend a hearing in November. That event, she later told The Guardian, was 'one of the most dehumanizing two hours of my life'. Three people - the professor in question, another dean who also complained about her, and the professor's faculty advisor - all demanded that Mohammad never be allowed to practise medicine. The advisor, in particular, at one point screamed, 'Who are you to decide what's a genocide?' Mohammad recounted to The Guardian. A week later, Mohammad was suspended from Emory's medical school for a year, but she is far from alone in facing such action for speaking up about the Palestinians. Detentions Just this month alone, a renowned Iranian professor of international law was barred from Yale University because a pro-Israeli, AI-powered website alleged she was linked to a terrorist group. Badar Khan Suri, an Indian national and post-doctoral fellow working at the Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, was detained by US customs agents. His bio said that he was working on a project that examined the 'potential causes that hinder cooperation among religiously diverse societies and possibilities to overcome those hindrances'. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not respond directly to questions from Middle East Eye on Suri's detention for an earlier article but instead sent a statement in which it accused Suri of "actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media". US judge says Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil will remain in US for now Read More » "Suri has close connections to a known or suspected terrorist, who is a senior advisor to Hamas. The Secretary of State issued a determination on March 15, 2025 that Suri's activities and presence in the United States rendered him deportable," the statement sent to MEE read. The DHS did not provide any evidence or online reference to its claims. Suri's arrest has prompted outrage amongst his colleagues, who describe him as "a respected academic and scholar". Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist, green card holder and recent graduate of Columbia University, was denied protection by university administrators after he complained of threats to his livelihood and family. Like Suri, he was later picked up before being entered into government records as a detainee in Louisiana, where Suri is also now being held. A judge last week ordered that Khalil must remain in the US for now and did not grant the government a motion to dismiss Khalil's case against them for wrongful arrest. The government is seeking to have Khalil's case take place in Louisiana, but the judge ordered that it be heard in New Jersey.
Yahoo
24-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
A Palestinian American medical student objected to working alongside IDF soldiers. The university suspended her
Umaymah Mohammad has wanted to be a doctor for as long as she remembers. She traces her ambition to the story of her mother, one of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced by Israel to Jordan in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, and who contracted polio as a toddler. Despite living with the debilitating disease, Mohammad's mother went on to raise five children and obtain a graduate degree in the US. It's the story of a woman who 'overcame unbearable medical circumstances', Mohammad said. It also taught the Palestinian American about 'the sociological determinants of health', she said, as Mohammad believes displacement contributed to her mother catching the disease, due to the poor sanitary conditions entire communities of Palestinian refugees faced at the time. Mohammad, now 28, was up front in her applications to medical school about her goal of becoming a 'physician who speaks up about the social structures of violence that affect health' – and received rejections from most. Emory University, in Atlanta, was an exception. She began a dual program there in 2019 to get both her medical degree and a sociology PhD. Related: The US is poised to use terror laws against students. This could be worse than McCarthyism | Thomas Anthony Durkin and Bernard Harcourt Four years into her studies, 7 October happened. After watching Israel's deadly retaliation on Gaza in horror from afar, in January 2024, Mohammad sent an email to the entire medical school with the subject: 'Palestinian blood stains your hands, Emory University and School of Medicine.' She railed against her fellow students and the school's faculty for being 'silent about the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians'. That spring, Emory's campus erupted in protests seeking divestment from Israel, prompting Emory's president to call in the Atlanta police on 25 April. It was the fastest show of police force on a US campus at the time. Police used tasers on the students, also a first. As an organizer, Mohammad was in the thick of it. The next day, she gave an interview on the Democracy Now! news program in which she spoke of the climate on campus for protesters. She also talked about an Emory medical school professor who had recently returned from volunteering as a medic in the Israeli military. This would lead, seven months later, to her suspension from medical school for a year, after she was found to have violated the medical school's standard of 'professional conduct'. Mohammad's case has become a tense showdown over expression, mirroring the conflict playing out in institutions across the US over Israel's ongoing assault on Gaza. It is also emblematic of a specific concern: professors and students beginning to object to the presence of Israelis on campus who are fresh off military service. *** When Mohammad went into the Democracy Now! interview in April, she was already upset about what she saw as an immoral double standard. Months earlier, an Emory medical school professor, Abeer N AbouYabis, had been fired after posting on Facebook in support of Palestinians after the events of 7 October. Her post included the phrase: 'They got walls, we got gliders / Glory to all resistance fighters,' a reference to the way members of Hamas glided over walls in Gaza to enter Israel and stage their attack. According to a report on AbouYabis's firing by Emory's committee for open expression, her post was seen as 'glorifying' the group. At the same time, Mohammad told her Democracy Now! interviewer: 'One of the professors of medicine we have at Emory recently went to serve as a volunteer medic' in the IDF. That professor, she continued, 'participated in aiding and abetting a genocide, in aiding and abetting the destruction of the healthcare system in Gaza and the murder of over 400 healthcare workers, and is now back at Emory so-called 'teaching' medical students and residents how to take care of patients'. Mohammad's remarks on the program drew complaints from the professor – who she did not name – and a dean, who has since left Emory. The professor told the medical school he didn't feel safe, as Mohammad's interview could expose him and his family to harassment. He asked medical school administrators to investigate her for violating the school's code of conduct. In July, an investigator released their initial findings: Mohammad had violated the medical school's code of conduct with regards to 'professionalism' and 'mutual respect' by singling out and disparaging an individual during her Democracy Now! interview. This caught the attention of Emory's committee for open expression, and that month, its chair, the physics professor Ilya Nemenman, asked the school of medicine to allow the committee to weigh in. But Nemenman was rebuffed: 'The School of Medicine Conduct Code does not include a role for the [committee] in a student disciplinary matter,' said the executive associate dean John William Eley in his reply. Nemenman wrote back almost immediately, reiterating his request and insisting that this interpretation broke with at least a decade's worth of precedent. His reaction was echoed by George Shepherd, a law professor and Emory's faculty senate president, who also wrote to Eley expressing he was 'surprised' at the 'terse rejection'. (The faculty senate oversees the committee.) 'A student's right to free expression is implicated most dramatically when Emory disciplines the student for what they have expressed,' Shepherd added. Neither Shepherd nor Nemenman received a reply, and in September, Eley asked Mohammad in a letter which of two routes she wanted to follow: accept the finding and allow a dean to decide on appropriate sanctions, or proceed with a hearing. She chose the latter. 'Accepting guilt would mean accepting not talking about Palestine and accepting not talking about genocide, and no career is worth that,' she told the Guardian. Later that month, the open expression committee released a report of its own: according to its independent investigation, the content of Mohammad's interview was protected by Emory's policy on free expression. In fact, the committee said, the school of medicine had violated Emory's policy on open expression by conducting the investigation in the way it did. Nemenman wrote in the report that, by ignoring the committee, the school of medicine 'violated not just the Policy, but, ironically, also the 'principles of professionalism and mutual respect', which they had aimed to enforce with this Conduct Code investigation'. Caught between these two conflicting interpretations, Mohammad faced her hearing on 12 November. The professor and the dean who had accused her, together with a faculty adviser of the professor, 'testified for my expulsion', she said. 'They wanted me to never be able to practice medicine … [and] one was spitting across the table, his face red, yelling a lot,' she recalled. They demanded she provide evidence to support her claims about the professor. At one point, the adviser screamed: 'Who are you to decide what's a genocide?' Mohammad said she felt outmatched and that attempts to argue her case fell on deaf ears. She described the hearing as 'one of the most dehumanizing two hours of my life'. As Mohammad's PhD adviser, the sociology professor Karida L Brown, was allowed to accompany her in the hearing. Brown, whose research centers on race and racism, echoed Mohammad's description. It was 'like a Jim Crow court', she said. 'It never felt fair, from the beginning,' she said, citing the school of medicine's refusal to engage the open expression committee or consider its report. Seven days after the hearing, Mohammad was informed that she had been suspended from the medical school for one academic year, and would be on probation from the time she returned until she graduated. Her appeal of the suspension was denied. Mohammad decided to go public: in the new year she wrote about her case for Mondoweiss and held a press conference, in the hopes the school of medicine would reverse its decision and change its code of conduct to better align with Emory's policies on open expression. Her name and photo had already been posted online after her January 2024 email by pro-Israel groups such as Canary Mission, and fellow medical school students had also called her a 'terrorist' online. In this atmosphere, she decided at one point to leave her Atlanta house for a week – 'for safety', she said. A request for comment to Eley was forwarded to an Emory spokesperson, Laura Diamond, who said: 'Emory is unable to discuss student conduct cases.' Diamond also pointed out that Emory released an updated open expression policy on 20 March. The new policy states that while a representative from the free expression committee may play an advisory role in disciplinary hearings if requested by the person facing discipline, it has no right to relevant information or records from university officials, nor does it have a right to participate in hearings. 'Administrators are still able to ignore open expression policy – [the updated language] doesn't sufficiently provide protection under open expression policy to students rights,' said a person familiar with the deliberations. The language was updated because of Mohammad's case, they said. Mohammad has at least a year left on her sociology PhD, after which she was planning to return to her MD program. Instead, her suspension will go into effect then, delaying her MD another year. As she returned to campus this spring, one scene in particular from her hearing played over and over in her head. 'I'll never forget what one of them said to me at the end,' she said. 'I'm sorry about your mother, but that has nothing to do with this.' *** Particularly since the 1967 war that displaced Mohammad's mother and thousands of others, healthcare for Palestinians in Gaza has been fragmented and weakened. But in the last 18 months, 'Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza's healthcare system,' according to a UN report, which accused the IDF of war crimes including targeting medical personnel and bombing most of Gaza's hospitals. More than 1,000 healthcare workers have been killed in Gaza since October 2023. Israel has denied the allegations. It is in this context that Mohammad and some in the medical field in the US have grown increasingly frustrated at the lack of outcry from members of their profession – especially since most of those bombs were made in the US. The frustration, in some cases, has become personal, feeding tensions between students and faculty protesting Israel and Israelis on campus who have served in the IDF since 7 October. (Military service is compulsory in Israel, and a number of Israelis in the US traveled back to volunteer in the military after the Hamas attacks.) 'What kind of care are medical students learning when these are our mentors and educators?' Mohammad wrote in her Mondoweiss article. 'What kind of care are patients receiving from doctors who believe in the legitimacy of apartheid, and that some human lives are not as important as others?'. At least two professors at US universities have faced consequences in recent months after publicly expressing concern about former IDF soldiers on campus. The Columbia University law professor Katherine Franke said she was forced out of the school in January after bringing up the issue of Israeli students 'right out of their military service … [who have] been known to harass Palestinian and other students on our campus'. She had also been speaking on Democracy Now! Dr Rupa Marya, a professor of medicine and a physician, was banned from campus at the University of California, San Francisco, for posting on X about the presence of former IDF soldiers at medical schools specifically: 'Med students at UCSF are concerned that a first year student from Israel is in their class. They're asking if he participated in the genocide of Palestinians in the IDF before matriculating.' In an interview with the Guardian, Marya elaborated on her concern: 'How do we integrate [Israeli] reservists into the medical community – with [Palestinian] students who have lost 50 or 60 family members? What is the moral obligation of medicine?' She is still undergoing hearings at UCSF to determine her future at the school, she said. UCSF did not reply to a request for comment. Also in January, a scheduled talk by a surgeon and member of the IDF medical corps at the University of Maryland school of medicine, on 'advancing care, saving lives and improving outcomes', was cancelled, after the school received thousands of emails in protest. Azka Mahmood, executive director of Cair-Georgia, or the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Mohammad's case was unusual because 'we haven't seen medical students targeted in this way,' she said. 'You have a Palestinian medical student who specifically joined the field trying to understand inequities and the role of medicine in violence. To have to work side by side with an IDF soldier is exacerbating, and makes it uniquely painful for her.' Mohammad and Marya have connected and are now part of a small group, including the founders of Doctors Against Genocide, who are launching a Zoom course aimed at healthcare workers and medical students who want to 'speak up about the genocide in Gaza … and build a just future for our health systems'. They called the course 'Cultivating Courage'. 'It is our obligation as a medical community to do no harm and to protect life,' said Karameh Kuemmerle, a Palestinian American doctor and founder of Doctors Against Genocide, a self-described 'global health coalition committed to stopping genocide' that has recently organized healthcare workers to lobby US lawmakers on getting aid to Gaza. 'To see our hospitals and medical institutions avoid this issue because it's 'too divisive' … is something we simply do not accept,' Kuemmerle said. Nidal Jboor, another founder, noted that medical institutions such as the Red Cross failed to speak out against the Holocaust while it was happening. If US doctors and medical students continue down the same path with regards to Gaza, he said, 'it's putting us on the wrong side of history.' The project has been a rare bright spot for Mohammad. 'Repression often brings you new community,' she said. Back at Emory, Brown, Mohammad's doctoral adviser, said she was proud of her student. 'She's doing what she's supposed to do – holding her field accountable to its stated ideals,' Brown said, adding: 'She will be Dr Mohammad, one way or the other.'
The Guardian
24-03-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
A Palestinian American medical student objected to working alongside IDF soldiers. The university suspended her
Umaymah Mohammad has wanted to be a doctor for as long as she remembers. She traces her ambition to the story of her mother, one of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced by Israel to Jordan in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, and who contracted polio as a toddler. Despite living with the debilitating disease, Mohammad's mother went on to raise five children and obtain a graduate degree in the US. It's the story of a woman who 'overcame unbearable medical circumstances', Mohammad said. It also taught the Palestinian American about 'the sociological determinants of health', she said, as Mohammad believes displacement contributed to her mother catching the disease, due to the poor sanitary conditions entire communities of Palestinian refugees faced at the time. Mohammad, now 28, was up front in her applications to medical school about her goal of becoming a 'physician who speaks up about the social structures of violence that affect health' – and received rejections from most. Emory University, in Atlanta, was an exception. She began a dual program there in 2019 to get both her medical degree and a sociology PhD. Four years into her studies, 7 October happened. After watching Israel's deadly retaliation on Gaza in horror from afar, in January 2024, Mohammad sent an email to the entire medical school with the subject: 'Palestinian blood stains your hands, Emory University and School of Medicine.' She railed against her fellow students and the school's faculty for being 'silent about the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians'. That spring, Emory's campus erupted in protests seeking divestment from Israel, prompting Emory's president to call in the Atlanta police on 25 April. It was the fastest show of police force on a US campus at the time. Police used tasers on the students, also a first. As an organizer, Mohammad was in the thick of it. The next day, she gave an interview on the Democracy Now! news program in which she spoke of the climate on campus for protesters. She also talked about an Emory medical school professor who had recently returned from volunteering as a medic in the Israeli military. This would lead, seven months later, to her suspension from medical school for a year, after she was found to have violated the medical school's standard of 'professional conduct'. Mohammad's case has become a tense showdown over expression, mirroring the conflict playing out in institutions across the US over Israel's ongoing assault on Gaza. It is also emblematic of a specific concern: professors and students beginning to object to the presence of Israelis on campus who are fresh off military service. When Mohammad went into the Democracy Now! interview in April, she was already upset about what she saw as an immoral double standard. Months earlier, an Emory medical school professor, Abeer N AbouYabis, had been fired after posting on Facebook in support of Palestinians after the events of 7 October. Her post included the phrase: 'They got walls, we got gliders / Glory to all resistance fighters,' a reference to the way members of Hamas glided over walls in Gaza to enter Israel and stage their attack. According to a report on AbouYabis's firing by Emory's committee for open expression, her post was seen as 'glorifying' the group. At the same time, Mohammad told her Democracy Now! interviewer: 'One of the professors of medicine we have at Emory recently went to serve as a volunteer medic' in the IDF. That professor, she continued, 'participated in aiding and abetting a genocide, in aiding and abetting the destruction of the healthcare system in Gaza and the murder of over 400 healthcare workers, and is now back at Emory so-called 'teaching' medical students and residents how to take care of patients'. Mohammad's remarks on the program drew complaints from the professor – who she did not name – and a dean, who has since left Emory. The professor told the medical school he didn't feel safe, as Mohammad's interview could expose him and his family to harassment. He asked medical school administrators to investigate her for violating the school's code of conduct. In July, an investigator released their initial findings: Mohammad had violated the medical school's code of conduct with regards to 'professionalism' and 'mutual respect' by singling out and disparaging an individual during her Democracy Now! interview. This caught the attention of Emory's committee for open expression, and that month, its chair, the physics professor Ilya Nemenman, asked the school of medicine to allow the committee to weigh in. But Nemenman was rebuffed: 'The School of Medicine Conduct Code does not include a role for the [committee] in a student disciplinary matter,' said the executive associate dean John William Eley in his reply. Nemenman wrote back almost immediately, reiterating his request and insisting that this interpretation broke with at least a decade's worth of precedent. His reaction was echoed by George Shepherd, a law professor and Emory's faculty senate president, who also wrote to Eley expressing he was 'surprised' at the 'terse rejection'. (The faculty senate oversees the committee.) 'A student's right to free expression is implicated most dramatically when Emory disciplines the student for what they have expressed,' Shepherd added. Neither Shepherd nor Nemenman received a reply, and in September, Eley asked Mohammad in a letter which of two routes she wanted to follow: accept the finding and allow a dean to decide on appropriate sanctions, or proceed with a hearing. She chose the latter. 'Accepting guilt would mean accepting not talking about Palestine and accepting not talking about genocide, and no career is worth that,' she told the Guardian. Later that month, the open expression committee released a report of its own: according to its independent investigation, the content of Mohammad's interview was protected by Emory's policy on free expression. In fact, the committee said, the school of medicine had violated Emory's policy on open expression by conducting the investigation in the way it did. Nemenman wrote in the report that, by ignoring the committee, the school of medicine 'violated not just the Policy, but, ironically, also the 'principles of professionalism and mutual respect', which they had aimed to enforce with this Conduct Code investigation'. Caught between these two conflicting interpretations, Mohammad faced her hearing on 12 November. The professor and the dean who had accused her, together with a faculty adviser of the professor, 'testified for my expulsion', she said. 'They wanted me to never be able to practice medicine … [and] one was spitting across the table, his face red, yelling a lot,' she recalled. They demanded she provide evidence to support her claims about the professor. At one point, the adviser screamed: 'Who are you to decide what's a genocide?' Mohammad said she felt outmatched and that attempts to argue her case fell on deaf ears. She described the hearing as 'one of the most dehumanizing two hours of my life'. As Mohammad's PhD adviser, the sociology professor Karida L Brown, was allowed to accompany her in the hearing. Brown, whose research centers on race and racism, echoed Mohammad's description. It was 'like a Jim Crow court', she said. 'It never felt fair, from the beginning,' she said, citing the school of medicine's refusal to engage the open expression committee or consider its report. Seven days after the hearing, Mohammad was informed that she had been suspended from the medical school for one academic year, and would be on probation from the time she returned until she graduated. Her appeal of the suspension was denied. Mohammad decided to go public: in the new year she wrote about her case for Mondoweiss and held a press conference, in the hopes the school of medicine would reverse its decision and change its code of conduct to better align with Emory's policies on open expression. Her name and photo had already been posted online after her January 2024 email by pro-Israel groups such as Canary Mission, and fellow medical school students had also called her a 'terrorist' online. In this atmosphere, she decided at one point to leave her Atlanta house for a week – 'for safety', she said. A request for comment to Eley was forwarded to an Emory spokesperson, Laura Diamond, who said: 'Emory is unable to discuss student conduct cases.' Diamond also pointed out that Emory released an updated open expression policy on 20 March. The new policy states that while a representative from the free expression committee may play an advisory role in disciplinary hearings if requested by the person facing discipline, it has no right to relevant information or records from university officials, nor does it have a right to participate in hearings. 'Administrators are still able to ignore open expression policy – [the updated language] doesn't sufficiently provide protection under open expression policy to students rights,' said a person familiar with the deliberations. The language was updated because of Mohammad's case, they said. Mohammad has at least a year left on her sociology PhD, after which she was planning to return to her MD program. Instead, her suspension will go into effect then, delaying her MD another year. As she returned to campus this spring, one scene in particular from her hearing played over and over in her head. 'I'll never forget what one of them said to me at the end,' she said. 'I'm sorry about your mother, but that has nothing to do with this.' Particularly since the 1967 war that displaced Mohammad's mother and thousands of others, healthcare for Palestinians in Gaza has been fragmented and weakened. But in the last 18 months, 'Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza's healthcare system,' according to a UN report, which accused the IDF of war crimes including targeting medical personnel and bombing most of Gaza's hospitals. More than 1,000 healthcare workers have been killed in Gaza since October 2023. Israel has denied the allegations. It is in this context that Mohammad and some in the medical field in the US have grown increasingly frustrated at the lack of outcry from members of their profession – especially since most of those bombs were made in the US. The frustration, in some cases, has become personal, feeding tensions between students and faculty protesting Israel and Israelis on campus who have served in the IDF since 7 October. (Military service is compulsory in Israel, and a number of Israelis in the US traveled back to volunteer in the military after the Hamas attacks.) 'What kind of care are medical students learning when these are our mentors and educators?' Mohammad wrote in her Mondoweiss article. 'What kind of care are patients receiving from doctors who believe in the legitimacy of apartheid, and that some human lives are not as important as others?'. At least two professors at US universities have faced consequences in recent months after publicly expressing concern about former IDF soldiers on campus. The Columbia University law professor Katherine Franke said she was forced out of the school in January after bringing up the issue of Israeli students 'right out of their military service … [who have] been known to harass Palestinian and other students on our campus'. She had also been speaking on Democracy Now! Dr Rupa Marya, a professor of medicine and a physician, was banned from campus at the University of California, San Francisco, for posting on X about the presence of former IDF soldiers at medical schools specifically: 'Med students at UCSF are concerned that a first year student from Israel is in their class. They're asking if he participated in the genocide of Palestinians in the IDF before matriculating.' In an interview with the Guardian, Marya elaborated on her concern: 'How do we integrate [Israeli] reservists into the medical community – with [Palestinian] students who have lost 50 or 60 family members? What is the moral obligation of medicine?' She is still undergoing hearings at UCSF to determine her future at the school, she said. UCSF did not reply to a request for comment. Also in January, a scheduled talk by a surgeon and member of the IDF medical corps at the University of Maryland school of medicine, on 'advancing care, saving lives and improving outcomes', was cancelled, after the school received thousands of emails in protest. Azka Mahmood, executive director of Cair-Georgia, or the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Mohammad's case was unusual because 'we haven't seen medical students targeted in this way,' she said. 'You have a Palestinian medical student who specifically joined the field trying to understand inequities and the role of medicine in violence. To have to work side by side with an IDF soldier is exacerbating, and makes it uniquely painful for her.' Mohammad and Marya have connected and are now part of a small group, including the founders of Doctors Against Genocide, who are launching a Zoom course aimed at healthcare workers and medical students who want to 'speak up about the genocide in Gaza … and build a just future for our health systems'. They called the course 'Cultivating Courage'. 'It is our obligation as a medical community to do no harm and to protect life,' said Karameh Kuemmerle, a Palestinian American doctor and founder of Doctors Against Genocide, a self-described 'global health coalition committed to stopping genocide' that has recently organized healthcare workers to lobby US lawmakers on getting aid to Gaza. 'To see our hospitals and medical institutions avoid this issue because it's 'too divisive' … is something we simply do not accept,' Kuemmerle said. Nidal Jboor, another founder, noted that medical institutions such as the Red Cross failed to speak out against the Holocaust while it was happening. If US doctors and medical students continue down the same path with regards to Gaza, he said, 'it's putting us on the wrong side of history.' The project has been a rare bright spot for Mohammad. 'Repression often brings you new community,' she said. Back at Emory, Brown, Mohammad's doctoral adviser, said she was proud of her student. 'She's doing what she's supposed to do – holding her field accountable to its stated ideals,' Brown said, adding: 'She will be Dr Mohammad, one way or the other.'
