Help Fund Prof Jairo Fúnez-Flores's Legal Defence

My name is Alana Lentin. I am a Jewish woman and a Professor.

I am raising money to help my friend and colleague Jairo Fúnez-Flores fund his legal defence costs.

Professor Jairo Fúnez-Flores is an Assistant Professor of Curriculum Studies in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at Texas Tech University. His contribution to public pedagogy is well-known to many across the world who follow his X account for his insights into decolonial research and practice.

As detailed in this open letter, Professor Fúnez-Flores has used his platform to speak out in steadfast solidarity with the Palestinian people in light of the genocide currently being perpetrated against them. For this he has been targeted, doxxed, and slandered and now suspended by his university. Shockingly, Texas Tech University has ceded to the demands of a right-wing pressure group, Texas Scorecard , and suspended Professor Fúnez pending an investigation by the Office of Equal Opportunity into whether his ‘learning or working environments’ involve ‘discriminatory harassment.’

Professor Fúnez-Flores’s public pronouncements drawing attention to the horrific genocide in which over 30,000 Palestinians have been killed to date and where a preventable famine is causing the slow death of countless more, are being wilfully interpreted as potentially constituting discrimination and harassment.

Regardless of their own political positions, everyone should be deeply concerned about this harassment of Professor Fúnez-Flores and the attack on his livelihood. The blatant persecution and intimidation against Professor Funez-Flores is sad evidence of the insidious erosion of academic freedom and the return of political persecution of intellectual dissent.

I believe that all those who stand against racism, colonialism and genocide and on the side of freedom for the Palestinian people, are open to similar attacks to those on my friend, Jairo Fúnez-Flores. We must show our solidarity with him, knowing from his actions that he would do the same for us!

Therefore, I am requesting your help today to fund Professor Fúnez-Flores’s legal defence.