rich 1.0 Action Network https://actionnetwork.org <link href='https://actionnetwork.org/css/style-embed-v3.css' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css' /><script src='https://actionnetwork.org/widgets/v6/letter/where-is-our-professor?format=js&source=widget'></script><div id='can-letter-area-where-is-our-professor' style='width: 100%'><!-- this div is the target for our HTML insertion --></div> USAS - United Students Against Sweatshops https://actionnetwork.org/groups/united-students-against-sweatshops https://can2-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/letters/photos/000/044/517/normal/DSC01097.JPG Universities are supposed to foster an environment where students and faculty are guaranteed the freedom to learn. Last week, our school, Drexel University, failed as an institution of education to protect these freedoms by caving to malicious threats by racists. Our professor, Dr. George Ciccariello-Maher, spoke up against white supremacy and received death threats after right wing media like the Daily Caller and Fox News lied about what he said. What did Drexel do in the face of these threats from the alt-right? They placed our professor on forced administrative leave and banned him from campus. Drexel’s decision has done nothing but empower hate speech and must be immediately reversed. Will you help us defend our freedom to learn and our professor’s freedom to speak out by emailing Drexel University President John A. Fry and telling him to immediately reinstate Prof. Ciccariello-Maher? Drexel students are mobilizing in solidarity with professors around the country to fight back against the infringements on academic freedom and the dangerous precedent this sets for freedom of speech. What began with several students sending a letter criticizing the University’s decision to suspend Dr. Ciccariello-Maher and cancel classes has grown into a coordinated effort between students, parents, and faculty to reverse this decision – and we need you to join us. On Thursday, students from Prof. Ciccariello-Maker’s classes banded together and met at our regularly scheduled time to demonstrate that we are ready to learn. We’re sharing the picture we took then in a social media campaign telling Drexel that #academicfreedomcantwait and we’ve garnered support from hundreds of people around the world. Our campaign is already working. On Friday, Drexel stepped back from cancelling our classes and offered us an online class option, but we as students still feel that this is not enough. We refuse to yield any ground to those who threaten our education. We want to be back in a classroom with Prof. Ciccariello-Maher. We refuse to compromise our academics because white supremacists want to silence our professor for exercising his free speech. To continue this effort, we need your help. Please email President Fry (president@drexel.edu) and other key administrators, including Vice President Gregory Montanaro (gpm46@drexel.edu) and Provost Brian Blake (mb3545@drexel.edu), to let them know you stand with students and professors to protect our academic freedoms, to stand up to those who are willing to violate them, and to convince our institution that there is no room for compromising our student rights or our professor’s rights. Sincerely, Dakota Peterson & Eunice Kamami https://actionnetwork.org/letters/where-is-our-professor