How a Professor Turned His Firing Into a Nationwide Fight for Academic Freedom
Emma Whitford | 07 May 2026 | Inside Higher Ed
NEW YORK, N.Y.—By six o’clock on Monday, April 27, the City University of New York Graduate Center’s aptly named Skylight Room was humming with dozens of graduate students, professors and staff eager to hear from Tom Alter, a former Texas State University history professor who was fired in September after speaking at an online socialism conference. Some wore union swag. Several wore Palestinian keffiyehs. Others sported gray T-shirts with the words “Reinstate the CUNY fired four” splashed across the front—a reference to the four adjunct professors at Brooklyn College who were let go in June, allegedly for their pro-Palestinian activism….