Support Dr. Steven Thrasher 

Supporting Dr. Steven Thrasher

September 19, 2024

We are writing as a group of academics, journalists, and health professionals who are deeply concerned that Northwestern University is targeting Dr. Steven Thrasher for his political speech against Israel’s war in Gaza and for defending those students who also stand against it. We understand that Dr. Thrasher had his classes canceled summarily and is subject to a review of his teaching.

Dr. Thrasher, like many of the signatories of this letter, teaches courses on charged topics, covering ideas that are intended to challenge students to think differently. Indeed, challenging conventional wisdom and exposing students to new ideas are central mandates of institutions of higher education that we should all seek to preserve.

Northwestern recognized Dr. Thrasher as an outstanding scholar when they hired him as the inaugural Daniel H. Renberg Chair for Social Justice in Reporting, with a Focus on LGBTQ Issues at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, an honor that the university recently renewed. There is, of course, a bitter irony in the university targeting a professor who was ostensibly hired for their commitment to social justice for embodying that work and protesting what the International Court of Justice has suggested may constitute a genocide and the UN Special Rapporteur for Gaza has said may constitute genocidal policies.

As an assistant professor, Dr. Thrasher has already earned an international reputation that is not only tenure-worthy, but would garner a full professorship at most universities. Dr. Thrasher’s award-winning first book, The Viral Underclass, is an incredible and moving piece of journalism that tackles some of the most pressing questions of our collective moment. In this book, he uses viruses as a lens to reveal and understand startling inequalities of race, class, gender, ability, and sexuality. The public reception for The Viral Underclass was overwhelmingly positive. The New York Times named the paperback an Editor’s Choice. It was long-listed for the 2023 PEN/America John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Excellence in Nonfiction Literature and the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction.

In both The Viral Underclass and his other work, Dr. Thrasher bears witness and stands in solidarity with people the US often considers disposable. He is part of a cohort of journalists of color who collectively challenge the faux objectivity that has long defined the profession. It is not lost on us that as a Black gay man in the academy, Dr. Thrasher is both a rarity and disproportionately likely to be politically targeted, as data from the American Association of University Professors confirms. Northwestern has often touted its commitment to “diversity and inclusion.” The demeaning and disrespectful treatment of Dr. Thrasher is wholly inconsistent with that espoused value. Are Black and LGBTQ faculty welcome only to the extent that they remain silent on issues that matter to them and have profound global significance?

The academy is under attack from people committed to dividing the polity, promoting disinformation, and protecting the powerful. These attacks are central to a well-funded campaign to undermine higher education in America as part of a far-right political project. Journalists, scholars, and teachers like Dr. Thrasher are needed more than ever if we hope to learn about and undo the harms inflicted by unequal systems. We call on Northwestern to reject this new McCarthyism and to reinstate without condition our colleague, Dr. Steven Thrasher.

Many of us are faculty at all ranks, with positions at colleges and universities around the country. We are often called upon to speak, review promotion files, recommend job candidates, and otherwise support the academic mission of Northwestern. If the university administration continues a policy that compromises academic freedom, punishes junior faculty for exercising the rights to free speech and expression, and succumbs to the intimidation of nefarious forces outside of academia, it will irrevocably tarnish Northwestern’s reputation. It will also call into question the institution’s status as a respected center for scholarship, research and teaching that adheres to high ethical and professional standards.

Is this the image Northwestern wants to project into the world? We hope not.

To add your signature, please go to the petition, linked here.

Featured Image credit: Rdsmith4 & Steven Thrasher; modified by Tempest.