After refusing to heed the principal’s demands to stop wearing a “Free Palestine” pin on campus, a freshman English teacher was fired from Bishop O’Dowd High School this summer, highlighting how the war in Gaza is testing the limits of free speech in the workplace and across academia.
Erin Donevan, who’s worked as a teacher for much of the last decade, said the year-long war in Gaza – and what she described as an ongoing genocide – prompted her to put on the pin last April, in part as a sign of solidarity with students who may be grieving.
“I wore it on my lanyard just as a way to kind of let students know that I was a safe person to talk to if they wanted to speak about it, because there really weren’t any other spaces where I felt like the conversation was welcome,” Donevan said.
While she …