Has the Israel debate caused a new McCarthyism in US universities? Our panel reacts | Panelists

Researchers and civil liberties advocates call for the safeguarding of protected speech amid an uproar over campus activism

Well before the Israel-Gaza war broke out, a new McCarthyism was already widespread on American college campuses. During the Red Scare of the late 1940s and 50s, about 100 professors were fired for supposed communist sympathies; according to Greg Lukianoff, co-author of The Canceling of the American Mind, the number fired for their political beliefs - primarily for conservative or anti-woke" positions on race and gender - over the past 10 years is almost double that.

Shadi Hamid is a columnist and editorial board member at the Washington Post and a research professor of Islamic studies at Fuller Seminary. His most recent book is The Problem of Democracy: America, the Middle East, and the Rise and Fall of an Idea

Brett Max Kaufman is a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union's Center for Democracy