University of Texas under fire for removing papers of Palestine victims

In the wake of the Israel-Hamas war, many organizations, including student bodies have been outspoken in their demand for an end to violence in Gaza. Now a University of Texas Law School administrator is facing criticism after a viral tweet accused her of “silencing free speech” in relation to the conflict. 

In a tweet now under community guidelines, a UT Law Student named Araceli (@chelicheesefry) recorded a UT Law School assistant dean removing flyers listing the names of Palestinians who were killed during the conflict in Gaza on Thursday, November 16. The video — which has received 1.5 million views and reposted almost 10,000 times as of Friday, November 17 — shows dozens of papers with the names of Gaza victims plastered to a wall at UT’s campus.

Watch the full video here.

The UT Law School responded to the video with a thread of tweets starting with, “Today, a video was shared on this platform purporting to show a law school administrator suppressing the free speech of students. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

UT Law Student, @kiararenaeee on Twitter said “students demanded that they have the papers back and students were the ones that went around the school to put them back up.”

Another response tweet from the UT Law thread reads, “This law school is aggressively pro-free speech. The posters at issue here? In fact, they are on display all over our building, covering more than a dozen *authorized* locations. No one is being silenced.”

The school claims the posters were on display all around the UT Law building and covered “more than a dozen unauthorized locations,” which is why they were being taken down in the video, according to the thread. 

In a photo of one of the UT Law poster boards, a flyer reads, “Removal of posters and fliers is a violation of UT Institutional Rules and the Law School Honor Code.”