Emory University suspends Palestinian medical student Umaymah Mohammad for speaking out in support of Palestine during media interview

This article has been updated to correct the date for a Democracy Now! interview. A previous version of the article stated April 26, 2025. The correct date is April 26, 2024.

In November 2024, Emory University School of Medicine suspended Umaymah Mohammad for her activism around Palestine, as she refused to remain silent during the ongoing genocide of her people. On Feb. 11, 2025, the Georgia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-GA), along with Emory students and faculty, held a press conference for Mohammed, demanding that the university drop the conduct violation charges against her.  

During the press conference, Dr. Anna Mullany, a postdoctoral fellow at Emory University, said, “The world needs doctors like Umaymah Mohammad, those willing to have bigger and honest conversations about health and society. Doctors who understand that health is not merely the absence of disease and suffering but that health and health inequities are social, that our individual and collective health, or lack thereof, are deeply connected to history and the political, social, and economic structures of society.”  

Immediately following the conference, students and protesters held a demonstration, marching around Emory’s campus to show their solidarity with Mohammad. The demonstration ended in front of the Emory School of Medicine, where protesters chanted for a free Palestine and called out the institution for continuing to support the genocide in Gaza. Students expressed that, instead of Emory healthcare professionals helping to prevent the genocide, the institution is suspending students who stand up against it. 

Mohammad started medical school in 2019. While at Emory, she said she quickly noticed the systemic structural violence at the institution. Emory University has a long history of racial discrimination, including the presence of racist imagery in its yearbooks and a past of denying Black students from enrolling. She told the Atlanta Community Press Collective (ACPC) that many of her peers characterize the school as a “racist, hostile, and uncomfortable institution, especially if you are a Black, Brown, Muslim, or Arab student.” 

Mohammad faces backlash after October 7, 2023 

Pro-Palestinian students and activists set up an encampment at the ‘Quad’ at Emory University on April 25, 2024, to protest the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza and the building of Cop City. A few hours into the encampment protest, Emory University called the police on its students, leading to one of the most brutal police responses to an encampment across the nation. Students, teachers, and activists were tear-gassed, beaten, arrested, and tased just hours after the encampment was set up. 

Mohammad interviewed with Democracy Now! on April 26, 2024, about the encampment and called out Emory faculty for enabling Israel’s genocide. During the interview, she referred to an IDF soldier-physician who works at Emory without naming the him. She said that this individual “aided and abetted in a genocide, aided and abetted in the destruction of the healthcare system in Gaza, and in the murder of over 400 healthcare workers, and is now back at Emory, so-called teaching medical students and residents how to take care of patients.” 

This soldier-physician, Dr. Joshua H. Winer, is an Associate Professor in the Division of Surgical Oncology, Department of Surgery at Emory University School of Medicine. Dr. Winer discussed his experience serving in the IDF in a Times of Israel article. 

On June 17, 2024, Mohammad received an email from the Dean of Medical Education Affairs stating that she had been accused of violating the Emory code of student conduct in connection with the interview she gave on Democracy Now!. She was suspended for violating Emory’s code of conduct requiring “professionalism” and “respect.” During her conduct hearing in November, she detailed the suspension, saying, “All three of [the complainants] advocated for my expulsion. All three of them advocated that I should never be able to practice medicine.” Mohammad quickly appealed the suspension, but her appeal was rejected.  

“In a world where so much Palestinian flesh has been taken off the planet, has been stolen from the world, how can I deliver even an ounce for them to take?” Mohammad said. “I decided, even if I knew I was going to lose the hearing, I was going to fight. I was going to fight for my right to be a medical student, fight for my right to speak the truth, and my right to expose the genocide of my people and the ways medical institutions are complicit in it.” 

Emory violates Title VI 

After Oct. 7, 2023, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Georgia chapter received an overwhelming number of reports from students who were scared and experiencing harassment. Students stated that they were being doxxed and attempted to reach out to Emory University for help. When Emory did not respond to the students’ reports, they turned to CAIR-GA for assistance. 

“There was a lot of fear for their physical safety, and a lot of mental health consequences,” said Azka Mahmood, executive director of CAIR-GA. “Many students had to get extensions on their academic work, their grades suffered, they needed mental health counseling. The saddest thing about this whole process was that they kept reaching out to the university. They kept asking their administrators. They kept asking the people that they trusted to help them, and the system kept failing them.” 

The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights sent a letter to Emory University President Fenves stating that Emory “contributed to and, at a minimum, appears to have failed to respond promptly or effectively to a hostile environment based on race and national origin.” Ultimately, the university’s actions were found to be “inconsistent with the requirements of Title VI [of the Civil Rights Act].” Mahmood said that the Department of Education is now monitoring Emory’s campus policies. 

The discrimination students are facing is not isolated to Emory university. CAIR-GA received a historic number of reports about discrimination, with over half related to Palestine and nearly one-third coming from students who were being targeted for their advocacy work. “We have supported students who are in elementary school, middle school, and high school. We are seeing reports of students being profiled. Teachers commenting on students’ ethnic and national origin, comments about students being terrorists and peer-to-peer bullying,” Mahmood said.  

With the rise of discrimination against Arabs and Muslims across the state of Georgia, Mohammad reaffirms her unwavering commitment to medicine and the liberation of Palestine.  

“I applied to medical school due to my commitment to ethical, holistic care for our communities—a care so deep that I would put my body, my career, on the line to protect another person’s life, just like the healthcare workers in Gaza,” Mohammad said. “When a genocide has taken more than 60,000 Palestinian lives, has injured more than 100,000 Palestinian bodies, has made more children limbless than any place in the world, isn’t it the duty of healthcare workers and physicians to stand in the way of that violence?”