Professor sues University of California for suspension over comments about Israel’s war in Gaza

Rupa Marya, a doctor and professor at the university's San Francisco campus, says her free speech rights were violated

A professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, says the university violated her freedom of speech rights by suspending her for her online comments about Israel's war in Gaza in a new lawsuit.

The suit was filed by Rupa Marya, an internal medicine physician and professor at UCSF, identified as an expert in decolonial theory. Marya was placed on leave in September 2024 and had her clinical privileges briefly suspended by the UCSF executive medical board following comments she made on X that questioned the impacts of Zionism as a supremacist, racist ideology" on healthcare.