From our colleagues at the CUNY Graduate Center Chapter of the Professional Staff Congress:
The CUNY Graduate Center Chapter of the Professional Staff Congress is hosting a stop on Tom Alter’s Defend Free Speech tour!
Come listen to Tom and Noelle discuss the struggle for free speech on campus, and join the discussion on how we can build a movement to fight back against growing political repression in our universities.
Dr. Tom Alter, a respected and tenured professor of history at Texas State University, was fired on September 10th, 2025 for remarks he made at a socialist conference in his capacity as a private citizen. Texas State fired Tom with no due process, after a far-right internet personality posted doctored footage of him speaking and ran a smear campaign calling for his termination. Noelle Mapes, one of the CUNY Fired Four adjunct professors, now reinstated, was terminated by the Brooklyn College administration for Palestine solidarity activism.
WHERE: CUNY Graduate Center, Skylight Room, Floor 9, 365 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10016
WHEN: 6:00 – 8:00pm, April 27, 2026
WHAT: A conversation between union organizers and professors who have been fired due to their advocacy for socialism and Palestine.
SPEAKERS: Professor Tom Alter and Noelle Mapes, one of the CUNY “Fired Four”
Refreshments will be provided. Registration is not required, but recommended.
Facebook event here.
This event is co-sponsored by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), Higher Education Labor United (HELU), Movement of Rank and File Educators, the Tom Alter Defense Committee, the Graduate Center chapter and the Academic Freedom Committee of the Professional Staff Congress-CUNY, the Doctoral and Graduate Students’ Council (DGSC), Freedom Socialist Party, International Marxist Humanist Organization, Left Voice, Socialist Horizon, Solidarity, the Tempest Collective, and Workers’ Voice.