(JTA) — Marc Lamont Hill, a political commentator who was fired by CNN after a video surfaced of him calling for “a free Palestine from the river to the sea” will not lose his teaching position, Temple University said.
The Philadelphia school’s board of trustees stated their “disappointment, displeasure, and disagreement with Professor Hill’s comments” made late last month during an event at the United Nations for the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.
Hill, a professor of media studies and urban education, as well as host of the syndicated television show “Our World with Black Enterprise,” later apologized for using a phrase associated with Palestinian extremists.
A Temple statement Tuesday saying Hill would stay on at the university cited the Constitution.
“In giving this speech outside of his role as a teacher and researcher at Temple, Professor Hill was not speaking on behalf of or representing the University,” the statement said. “We recognize that Professor Hill’s comments are his own, that his speech as a private individual is entitled to the same Constitutional protection of any other citizen, and that he has through subsequent statements expressly rejected anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic violence.”
