Fired over Gaza? Dr. Rupa Marya Sues UCSF, Says She Was Targeted for Speaking Up for Palestine

We speak with Dr. Rupa Marya, a physician, activist, author and composer, who this week filed two free speech complaints against her former employer, the University of California, San Francisco. The school fired her last month after a lengthy suspension over her criticism of Israel’s war on Gaza and its impact on healthcare in the Palestinian territory. “I didn’t expect that my career-ending move would be to say ‘stop bombing hospitals,’ for expressing support for Palestinian liberation and for criticizing the U.S.-backed genocide,” says Marya. She was named one of the top 20 most influential women in biomedicine by Nature and served on multiple national advisory boards. Since her firing, over 1,000 healthcare workers and students have signed open letters demanding her reinstatement and denouncing UCSF’s suppression of political expression.