DePaul adjunct professor fired for optional assignment on how 'genocide in Gaza' impacts health and biology

A DePaul University adjunct professor said she was fired for giving her students an optional assignment about the war in Gaza.

Anne d’Aquino, who taught in the Health Sciences Department, was terminated May 8. Two days earlier, she offered an optional assignment, asking students to evaluate the impact of the “genocide in Gaza on human health and biology,” she said.

“My termination was a breach of my academic freedom and another example of this administration’s efforts to twist any discussions of Palestine and Palestinian liberation language into false claims of antisemitism,” d’Aquino said at a news conference Thursday morning.

In support, about 50 demonstrators gathered on the corner of Seminary and Belden avenues. They waved Palestinian flags and held signs that read “Academic freedom includes Palestine.”

Students delivered a petition to the administrative office in the Monsignor Andrew J. McGowan Environmental Science and Chemistry building, calling for the reinstatement of d’Aquino. The printed copy of the petition extended 24 pages long with 1,500 signatures.

D’Aquino filed an appeal May 14, which Kristin Mathews, a university spokesperson, said will be “completed soon.”

The university did not immediately respond for comment .

D’Aquino was halfway through her first quarter teaching at DePaul when she was fired. She taught a class called Health 194, Human Pathogens and Defense, which covers topics such as infectious disease and antibiotics.

The optional assignment suggested students review articles about the “intersection of biological sciences, health and history in Palestine.” Afterwards, students would write about the impact of “genocide on biology.”

“I’d been trying to incorporate contemporary topics for students to connect their basic biology knowledge to something that’s currently happening in the wider world,” d’Aquino said.

D’Aquino said the assignment was related to the course. For months, scientists warned about the spread of infectious disease in Gaza due to starvation, malnutrition, overcrowding, destruction of critical water and sanitation infrastructure, she said.

In the termination email, Sarah Connolly, the chair of Health Sciences, wrote that students expressed concern about “the introduction of political matters into the class.”

“That was all very sudden,” d’Aquino said. “Nobody complained to me about the assignment. I received no negative feedback on the assignment.”

A freshman in d’Aquino’s class, who did not want to be identified due to safety concerns, was “shocked, disappointed and speechless” about the firing.

After d’Aquino left, Connolly filled in as the class instructor. The student stopped attending class.

“At Metro Chicago Hillel, we care deeply about the Jewish student experience at DePaul,” Charles, executive director of Metro Chicago Hillel, said in a statement. “Our hope is that the administration ensures that Jewish students feel safe, welcome and included in the classroom and all over campus, just like every other student.”

“[The firing] breaches everything DePaul stands for,” the student said. “Anne has love on her side.”

But Sarah van Loon, the regional manager of the American Jewish Committee Chicago, said the firing shows the “limits of protected academic freedom.”

Even if the assignment was optional, Van Loon believes d’Aquino introduced a topic that was “outside the bounds” of the class description.

“We’ve got a biology professor discussing politics in the Middle East or creating a comment about Gaza,” she said. “It really isn’t in line with what it is that they’re there to be teaching on and opens up the university to risk too.

“It doesn’t surprise me that the university felt that this was not something that upheld their standards,” Van Loon said.

But petition organizers said d’Aquino’s termination is part of a wider crackdown on academic freedom across U.S. college campuses.

Since Oct. 7, professors have said they have been fired, suspended or investigated for speaking out about the Israel-Hamas war, including at Stanford University and the City University of New York.

And the situation isn’t limited to colleges and universities.

Last November, two first-grade teachers were put on leave from their jobs at a public charter school that leases space at a Jewish synagogue in Los Angeles. The action was taken over them teaching first graders what one of the teachers described on social media as “a lesson on the genocide in Palestine,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

At DePaul, Victoria Agunod, an adjunct professor in the Peace, Justice and Conflict Studies Program, said the university investigated her for her pro-Palestinian views — which was “terrifying.”

She called investigations, such as the one she went through, “political suppression.”

And d’Aquino agrees.

“[It] coincides with efforts from far-right wing members of Congress to pressure university presidents into firing faculty and disciplining students for their speech about Palestine,” d’Aquino said.

Despite the firing, d’Aquino said she hopes to see her students’ final projects.

“I’m sad that I don’t get a chance to properly say goodbye to [my students],” d’Aquino said.