Michel DeGraff remains employed at MIT but has been removed from its linguistics section and says he is spending a third consecutive fall semester without a class.
MIT is continuing to pay tenured linguistics professor Michel DeGraff while he is not teaching this fall, following a yearslong dispute over academic freedom, pro-Palestinian activism and the limits of faculty authority. The New York Times reported, in a story republished by Boston.com, that DeGraff has been removed from MIT’s linguistics section and given the title “faculty at large.” He says this is now the third consecutive fall semester in which he has been paid without teaching a course.
The conflict began after DeGraff proposed a course titled “Language and Linguistics for Decolonization and Liberation and for Peace and Community Building — From the River to the Sea in Palestine and Israel to the Mountaintops of Haiti and Beyond.” An MIT panel rejected the class, questioning whether DeGraff had the expertise to teach it. DeGraff, a Haitian scholar whose work focuses on Creole languages, argued that the rejection violated his academic freedom and later sued MIT in federal court.
What followed became a larger institutional fight. According to the Times, MIT administrators accused DeGraff of being disruptive and violating university procedures after he publicly challenged the course decision, circulated internal correspondence and criticized administrators. He was temporarily removed from the linguistics section in late 2024, with a dean telling him that his speech rights did not place him above MIT’s rules.
DeGraff argues that MIT is punishing him for political speech and activism. MIT has denied his claims in court and has argued that his continued public advocacy undercuts his assertion that the university has chilled his speech. He remains scheduled to teach two established courses in the spring, including “Creole Languages and Caribbean Identities” and “Black Matters: Introduction to Black Studies.”
The dispute also illustrates why tenure remains such a consequential protection in higher education. DeGraff has not been fired, even as MIT has limited his departmental role and teaching assignments. The Times notes that his case is part of a broader wave of disputes involving professors, universities and political speech as campuses face increasing scrutiny over what faculty members say, teach and advocate.
The quick read: Tenure can make dismissal difficult, but it does not necessarily guarantee control over courses, departmental placement or teaching assignments. DeGraff’s fight with MIT shows how universities can discipline or constrain tenured faculty without terminating them — and why disputes over academic freedom increasingly turn on who gets to define where protected scholarship ends and institutional authority begins.