Maura Finkelstein on Academic Freedom, Being Jewish, Zionism, and Palestine

by Faramarz Farbod / April 24th, 2025

Host Faramarz Farbod talks with Dr. Maura Finkelstein, writer, ethnographer, anthropologist, and author of The Archive of Loss: Lively Ruination in Mill Land Mumbai (DUP 2019). Dr. Finkelstein was falsely accused of antisemitism and fired last May (2024) from her teaching position at Muhlenberg College in Allentown. We talk about the state of academic freedom, classrooms as ethnographic spaces, decanonization, being Jewish and anti-Zionist in the US, Zionism, Israel, misuses of antisemitism, Islamophobia, empire, and the present moment in history.

Faramarz Farbod, a native of Iran, teaches politics at Moravian College. He is the founder of Beyond Capitalism a working group of the Alliance for Sustainable Communities-Lehigh Valley PA and the editor of its publication Left Turn. He can be reached at farbodf@moravian.edu. Read other articles by Faramarz.

This article was posted on Thursday, April 24th, 2025 at 7:55am and is filed under Censorship, Freedom of Expression/Speech, Genocide, Interview, Israel (part of Mandate Palestine), Language, Palestine, Video, Zionism.