Published on 23 April 2026
Three professors at Emory University in Atlanta in the United States have filed a lawsuit over their arrest during the 2024 campus protests against Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
Their lawsuit Thursday argues that the university broke its own free speech policies when it called in police and state troopers to aggressively break up the protest, leading to 28 arrests.
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Philosophy professor Noel McAfee, one of the plaintiffs, said, “The judicial system will find that Emory failed to protect its students, to protect its staff, to protect the educational mission of the university.”
“So it’s not just about people’s individual rights. It’s our educational mission to train people in independent and critical inquiry, so they can learn how to connect with others, to be fearless.”
Emory spokeswoman Laura Diamond responded that the university believes “this lawsuit is baseless”.
“Emory acts appropriately and responsibly to keep our community safe from threats of harm,” Diamond said in a statement. “We regret that this issue is being litigated, but we have confidence in the legal process.”
This lawsuit is an example of how a wave of nationwide protests will continue to resonate on elite campuses through 2023 and 2024.
There have been several instances where students and teachers have filed lawsuits against universities, arguing that they have been discriminated against because of the protests.
But the Emory suit is unusual. McAfee and his co-plaintiffs — English and Indigenous studies professor Emilio del Valle-Escalante and economics professor Caroline Fohlin — all remain tenured faculty members. No one was convicted of any charges.
The civil lawsuit in DeKalb County State Court demands that the private university return the money the trio spent defending themselves against misdemeanor charges, which were later dismissed, as well as punitive damages.
McAfee said she is suing her employer “to try to hold them accountable and make change.”
The three say they were observers on April 25, 2024, when some students and others set up tents in the university’s main square to protest the war. They say Emory broke its own policies by calling in Atlanta police and Georgia state troopers without exploring alternatives.
McAfee was charged with disorderly conduct after he said he yelled “Stop!” Had shouted. An officer was roughly arresting a protester. Del Valle-Escalante said he was trying to help an elderly woman when he was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.
Fohlin said that, when he protested against officers throwing a protester to the ground, he himself was thrown to the ground and arrested, causing a concussion and spinal cord injury. Fohlin was charged with misconduct with an officer.
Emory claimed that those arrested that day were outsiders who had trespassed on school property. But out of the 28 people arrested, 20 were associated with the university.
The professors said that, after their arrest, they were targeted by threats and harassment, part of a pushback by conservatives who said universities were failing to protect Jewish students from anti-Semitism and were allowing anarchy.
However, advocates nationwide say there is a “Palestine exception” in which universities are willing to curb pro-Palestinian speech and protests. Palestine Legal, a legal aid group that supports such speech, said Tuesday that it received 300 percent more legal requests in 2025 than its annual average before 2023, mostly from college students and faculty.
After his arrest, McAfee served as President of the Emory University Senate. The body makes policy recommendations and helps draft the university’s open expression policy.
He said he asked then-President Gregory Fenves in 2024 why Emory police were not dropping charges against him and others. McAfee said Fenves told him he wanted to “see justice.”
The open expression policy was revised after 2024 to explicitly ban tents, camps, occupation of university buildings and demonstrations between midnight and 7 am.
Whatever the policy, McAfee said students are afraid to protest at Emory, saying the university has turned its back on what Atlanta civil rights icon John Lewis called “good trouble.”
He said, “Students know right now that any trouble at Emory will not be good trouble, they can be arrested.” “So the students are scared.”
