How Do I Teach at a University That Wants Me in Jail?

What does it mean to be charged with criminal trespassing on a campus where you work, teach, socialize, pray and generally spend way too much time?

For the past six years, the University of Texas at Dallas campus has been my home away from home. I was hired as an assistant professor of history while pregnant and began my job with a 6-month-old infant and a spouse working out of state. Overwhelmed in my first semester of teaching, I asked a colleague how she managed to succeed in academia as the primary caregiver of several children. She said, “Involve your children in your life at the university as much as possible.”

My son grew up on campus. He was welcomed by the previous dean at faculty meetings and luncheons when day care was closed. He attended soccer camp and swimming lessons on campus, and we spent countless weekend hours together in my office. Colleagues and students have gotten used to seeing him around. Two years ago, one of my students patiently taught my son skateboard tricks on campus. A little more than two months ago, I was arrested on that very spot, outside of the activity center where my son took his first swimming lesson.

On May 1, university administrators invited five highly militarized law enforcement bodies to invade our campus. This was in response to an encampment set up earlier that same day to raise consciousness about the ongoing genocide in Gaza and to call for accountability from the university. Students demanded that the university do three things: reject Texas governor Greg Abbott’s executive order targeting speech in support of Palestine, divest university funds from weapons manufacturers and issue a statement in support of an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

As a professor, ensuring the safety of my students is a fundamental duty. When the heavily armed riot police advanced, I saw that my students were in danger. As I stood with a colleague between the riot police and students, I was arrested alongside 20 colleagues, students and community members. After spending an intense night in the Collin County Detention Facility, we were released on bond and await possible trial on charges of criminal trespassing, a Class-B misdemeanor that carries up to a six-month jail sentence. The students are also facing a university disciplinary process, and one student was re-arrested after walking at his own graduation.

As it turns out, the arrest and the night spent in jail were almost the easy part. More than two months after the May Day arrests, faculty and students are still reeling from the fallout of the violent repression on campus. I now face the question of how to teach at a university that wants to separate me from my son, a university that believes I belong in jail.

Despite a bond order that granted me permission to be on campus for job-related activities, I was informed on the day of my release that campus police would arrest me if I tried to visit my office. Eventually, administrators and police negotiated an agreement allowing me to retrieve personal belongings with an escort from the same police force that participated in the coordinated effort to arrest me two days earlier. I was too afraid to enter the station, fearing the agreement would be disregarded and I would again be thrown in jail. I waited in my car, shaking, until I finally received a text that I could go to my office alone as long as I left campus immediately after. Despite this intimidation, I still taught a study abroad course on Moroccan history, welcoming 24 UT Dallas students in Morocco for a two-week intensive immersion in the history and culture of the country.

As a Muslim on campus, I had always felt supported by colleagues and administrators and had found open-minded students craving to learn and engage critically with sources of Middle Eastern history and get beyond simplistic or sensationalistic media representations. I was excited when I interviewed for the job and found out that the UTD student center has a prayer room and a place to make ablutions and that there is halal food in the food court. But this feeling of openness and acceptance ended Oct. 16 when UTD president Richard Benson sent an email that offered sympathy for Israeli victims of the Oct. 7 attack while ignoring the rapidly escalating Palestinian death count (now at almost 40,000, many women and children). Benson’s email signaled to me that Palestinian and Muslim lives and grief did not matter, that our values and beliefs had no place on campus.

Any sense of belonging on campus was further shattered while listening to the openly racist and Islamophobic rhetoric used by some colleagues in an Academic Senate meeting on May 22 to describe student protesters. This included comparing the peaceful student protesters to the KKK. In this same meeting, Benson explained why he would not honor a Senate resolution that asked him to encourage Collin County to drop the criminal trespassing charges. He stated repeatedly that he did not know if we had weapons when arrested or if we had previous criminal records, in effect sowing doubt with our colleagues by suggesting that we might be violent criminals—rather than friends, parents and valued members of the campus community. We now check our mail each day, waiting for a notice to appear in court.

Months of stilted communication with university administrators have brought little clarity. The university has taken different approaches to each of the three arrested professors, but the message has been consistent: We are unwelcome. The uncertainty has taken a paralyzing psychological toll and impacted our ability to carry out summer research and writing, let alone prepare for fall teaching. My research conducted over the past year on a Fulbright grant in Morocco remains to be written up until I am in a better place mentally. I have made the difficult decision to request a one-year delay of my tenure review. I have considered asking for a semester-long leave of absence, or permission to teach online—anything to ensure that the campus police will not arrest me again, which in my case would ensure my separation from my son. The only thing that keeps me centered is my direct work with students—writing letters of recommendation, reading dissertations and meeting with graduate students to discuss their research.

Spaces that had been filled with memories of inspiring students, exciting research breakthroughs and special moments with my son have been transformed into sites of terror and intimidation. Do our colleagues believe that we should be punished with state violence for trying to protect our students from harm? Do we as a university community believe that our students should be punished for protesting university investment in weapons manufacturers that arm the ongoing war on Gaza? Or for protesting in support of any cause, even one we may disagree with? Through their silence and obfuscation, university administrators are clearly saying that they do not want or care about faculty who have invested their time, care and labor in building this institution. I remain committed to my students and to my research. But first, I have to find a way to teach at a university that wants me in jail.