{"id":14300,"date":"2025-10-23T16:55:46","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T20:55:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/?p=14300"},"modified":"2025-10-31T14:26:50","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T18:26:50","slug":"speak-out-tom-alter-maga-mccarthyism-and-the-fight-for-free-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/2025\/10\/speak-out-tom-alter-maga-mccarthyism-and-the-fight-for-free-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"Speak out! Tom Alter, MAGA McCarthyism, and the fight for free speech"},"content":{"rendered":"

T<\/span>he U.S. is experiencing one of the largest waves of political repression in its history. Academics, socialists, leftists, intellectuals, Palestinians, Muslims, labor organizers, trans people, queer folks, migrants, immigrants, people of color, the disabled, the working-class, the poor are all under attack. The state\u2019s efforts to repress free speech are part of a larger campaign to silence and stamp out dissent of all kinds, and move the U.S. further towards authoritarianism. Recently, Tom Alter, a tenured historian, was fired from his job at Texas State University, simply for speaking as a Socialist.<\/p>\n

We must fight back.<\/em> Join us for this 90 minute Speak Out!<\/strong> with activists, organizers and writers who will share ideas about the meaning of MAGA McCarthyism and how we can together resist.<\/p>\n

When:<\/strong> Thursday, November 6, 2025 at 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm EST<\/p>\n

Where:<\/strong> Online, YouTube<\/p>\n

How:<\/strong> Register through Ticket Tailor<\/a> to receive a link to the live-streamed video on the day of the event. This event will also be recorded and captioning will be provided.<\/p>\n

Speakers<\/b><\/h4>\n

Tom Alter<\/b>\u00a0is a scholar and activist who was recently fired by Texas State University. He is the author of <\/span>Toward a Cooperative Commonwealth: The Transplanted Roots of Farmer-Labor Radicalism in Texas. <\/span><\/i>He is a member of the Texas State Employees Union, the American Association of University Professors, and Socialist Horizon.<\/span><\/p>\n

Eman Abdelhadi<\/b> is a scholar, organizer, and writer based in Chicago. She is an Assistant Professor of Sociology in the Department of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago. Her research focuses on Arab and Muslim communities in the United States and has been cited by NPR, <\/span>The Washington Post<\/span><\/i>, the <\/span>Associated Press<\/span><\/i>, and other outlets. She co-wrote the revolutionary sci-fi novel <\/span>Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052\u20132072<\/span><\/i> (Common Notions Press, 2022). She writes a regular column on Palestine and politics for <\/span>In These Times<\/span><\/i> magazine. Her essays have appeared in <\/span>Jacobin<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>Truthout<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>Zeteo<\/span><\/i>, and other publications.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jodi<\/b> Dean<\/b> is Professor of Politics at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. Her most recent books are <\/span>Comrade: An Essay on Political Belonging<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>Capital’s Grave: Neofeudalism<\/span><\/i> and the New Class Struggle, both published by Verso.<\/span><\/p>\n

Catarina Kissinger<\/b> is an organizer with the Texas State Employees Union (TSEU \/ CWA Local 6186), where she helps lead the union\u2019s campaign in defense of Dr. Tom Alter and works to build collective power among faculty, staff, and student workers in higher education.<\/span><\/p>\n

Karim<\/b> Mattar<\/b> is Associate Professor of English at the University of Colorado at Boulder. A descendant of survivors of the Palestinian Nakba of 1948, he works at the intersection of Palestine studies, the humanities, and higher education. He is currently at work on “Writing the Catastrophe: Trauma and Responsibility Across Generation,” a monograph that interweaves personal experience, family history, cultural critique, and political analysis to tell a multigenerational, transcontinental story of responsibility to Palestine. Karim is co-chair of the CAHE Palestine Caucus and Faculty Editor of the AAUP’s <\/span>Journal of Academic Freedom.<\/span><\/i>“<\/span><\/p>\n

David McNally<\/b> has taught history and political economy at the University of Houston and York University in Toronto. He is currently director of the Project on Race and Capitalism. David is the author of eight books including most recently,<\/span> Slavery and Capitalism: A New Marxist History<\/span><\/i> published earlier this year by the University of California Press.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dave Zirin<\/b> is a writer at <\/span>The Nation<\/span><\/i> and hosts The Edge of Sports podcast. He is the author of many books including <\/span>The Kaepernick Effect: Taking a Knee, Changing TheWorld.<\/span><\/i>
\n<\/span><\/i>————————————————————–<\/span><\/p>\n

This event is sponsored by <\/span>Committee to Defend Tom Alter<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>Texas State Employees Union\/CWA Local 6186<\/span><\/a>, and\u00a0 <\/span>Haymarket Books<\/span><\/a>. While all of our events are freely available, we ask that those who are able make a solidarity donation in support of our important publishing and programming work.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Tempest Collective is a supporter of the <\/span>Committee to Defend Tom Alter<\/span><\/a> and encourages everyone to attend this event on Thursday, November 6 at 7 pm ET, as well as to join the fight to defend Tom Alter and the growing list of victims of Trumpite repression and the broad attacks on all of our democratic rights.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":14302,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,50],"tags":[526,564,188,162],"class_list":["post-14300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article","category-event","tag-academic-freedom","tag-academic-repression","tag-free-speech","tag-solidarity"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Copy-of-tempest_feature_card-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14300\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}