Hannah Hussein is a Palestinian American and graduate student at Le Moyne College. Hussein has frequently felt that her school has not upheld its commitment to free expression when she and other students have expressed pro-Palestinian sentiment.

Hannah Hussein, a Palestinian-American student at Le Moyne College, counted herself among the students, alumni, local Jewish activists, advocacy organizations, national pundits, international genocide scholars and others who decried President Linda LeMura’s viral letter criticizing Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mosab Abu Toha’s “language.”

Hussein, who returned to Le Moyne this fall as a graduate student in the school’s nursing program, has vowed to make Muslim and Palestinian voices heard on campus as the president of the school’s Students for Justice in Palestine Club. She intends to bring speakers like Abu Toha and Dr. Mohamed El-Far (a Gazan doctor who in 2025 spoke at Le Moyne about a humanitarian mission he led into Gaza in Feb. 2024) to describe their personal experiences to Le Moyne’s community.

“I would love to bring in more speakers. I think that’s well received by the community,” Hussein said. “I feel like we have larger groups of people in attendance when we do have guest speakers, especially when they’re well known like Mosab.”

Such speakers may prolong the fallout that ensued when LeMura rebuked Abu Toha’s language after Abu Toha was invited to speak at Le Moyne.

Hussein says she has regularly been disappointed by Le Moyne’s treatment of students advocating for Palestine during her undergraduate studies, and said she considers LeMura’s email the latest in a series of attempts by the school to suppress pro-Palestinian speech.

Mosab Abu Toha, an author from Gaza, in April gave a guest lecture at Le Moyne that held particular significance for Hussein, a Palestinian-American from Syracuse. Abu Toha in 2025 won a Pulitzer for a series of essays describing the plight of Palestinians in Gaza. 

In a campuswide email sent two weeks after Abu Toha’s lecture, LeMura didn’t mention Abu Toha but referenced a guest lecture given on April 15, the same day Abu Toha spoke at the college. LeMura wrote about community concerns brought to her attention about the use of the word “genocide” by “the speaker” in connection with the state of Israel.

In the email, she wrote she is committed to “making it unequivocally clear that antisemitism, along with all forms of bigotry and hate, has no place at Le Moyne.”

That frustrated Hussein and others who saw Abu Toha’s lecture as a rare firsthand account of Israel’s relentless military actions in Gaza, which a United Nations Commission, leading international human rights groups and dozens of nations have called a genocide of the Palestinian people.

LeMura’s use of the word “antisemitism” surprised Hussein, the student said.

“Nothing during that event was antisemitic in any way, but I guess the use of the term genocide was considered antisemitic, which was disturbing, really,” Hussein said.

Hussein is a Palestinian American born and raised in Syracuse, and a graduate student in Le Moyne’s nursing program. Credit: Maddi Brown

It was important to Hussein for her campus community to hear Abu Toha describe his experiences with Israeli occupation. At the lecture, Abu Toha, who bears scars from a 2009 Israeli airstrike, played audio of airstrikes that he recorded while living in Gaza. He outlined how Israel’s offensive had wiped out entire family trees. Abu Toha himself has lost over 100 relatives to Israel’s ongoing offensive on Gaza.

“It was just good to hear that kind of individualized aspect because we’re so used to telling other people’s stories,” Hussein said. “It was good to hear it from the source, and I think there were a lot of people in attendance who would not necessarily get that exposure otherwise.”

Le Moyne spokesperson Joe Della Posta, who the college has designated to speak for LeMura, declined to make LeMura available for an interview and asked Central Current to instead send written questions. Della Posta later thanked reporters for sending LeMura questions but did not answer them.

Della Posta sent the same statement that the school sent Central Current in April, writing that the school “seeks to maintain genuine dialogue.”

“Le Moyne College is committed to the free exchange of ideas that is central to our academic mission,” wrote Della Posta.

‘Our speech is seen as inflammatory’

LeMura’s statement built on previous experiences in which Hussein said Le Moyne’s administration and staff made Hussein feel that the school did not respect Palestinian identity. 

Hussein described her experiences to another student, Syd Kellogg, who documented them in a 2024 letter to the editor published by The Dolphin, Le Moyne’s student newspaper. In the letter, Kellogg described how a professor at the school questioned Hussein’s motives for participating in a scheduled walkout in support of Palestine.

Kellogg is an outspoken Le Moyne graduate and former president of Peace Action Le Moyne. Kellogg worked as a business intern with Central Current in the summer of 2026.

Central Current could not reach the professor for this story.

Central Current asked Della Posta if Le Moyne was aware of the alleged incidents documented in the letter, but the spokesman did not respond to the question. 

Jim Hannan, Le Moyne’s provost and vice president for academic affairs, responded to Kellogg’s request for comment on the alleged incidents with a broad statement supporting student expression as a component of Jesuit education, according to the letter to the The Dolphin’s editor.

Students have since organized multiple meetings with administration, and two meetings with LeMura, to express their discontent with the school’s treatment of pro-Palestinian sentiment and of students affected by Israel’s actions in Gaza, said Kellogg.

In both meetings, one of which happened before Abu Toha spoke at the school, LeMura told students her door was always open for a conversation, Kellogg said in an interview with Central Current.

After a 2025 meeting with LeMura, Kellogg said they went to the administrative office to try to speak with LeMura about a United Nations report finding Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. When Kellogg found the door to LeMura’s administrative offices closed, they say they taped the report to the door.

Hours later, Kellogg said they were confronted in their dorm by three security guards who said they were responding to the student having brought something to the administrative office.

Kellogg described the incident in the spring meeting with LeMura, who did not acknowledge the incident, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by Central Current.

Hussein said she has come to feel that on Le Moyne’s campus, Palestinian expression is perceived as a provocation.

“Our speech is seen as inflammatory and causing issues, as opposed to sharing what we believe to be true,” Hussein said. “And especially in an academic setting, where everything is in a professional manner and moderated, It’s just disappointing to say the least.”

‘I did not deny any genocide’

In the wake of LeMura’s letter, students requested a meeting with her.

Hussein had hoped that the students would be heard by the president, she said, but measured her expectations because a past meeting with LeMura had not seemed to accomplish change, Hussein said.

This meeting was no different, Hussein said.

“Her body language spoke so loud when she was listening to our points. She was making faces, like she was confused or didn’t know what we were talking about. It was just really frustrating,” Hussein said. “The response we got was disappointing.”

Central Current obtained a recording of the May meeting between students and Le Moyne’s administration, which Hussein and Kellogg had also described to Central Current.

LeMura at the meeting told the students, “I did not deny any genocide” and said she didn’t name Abu Toha in the email to avoid “causing grief for him.” LeMura told students she had not contacted Abu Toha since, despite his and numerous others’ calls for a direct apology.

“Have I reached out to him? It doesn’t seem as though he’s interested in that. I think that’s a safe assumption. Would I be willing to? Absolutely.” LeMura said. “… I’m always open to dialogue.”

Central Current asked Della Posta if LeMura has contacted Abu Toha since the meeting, but Della Posta did not answer the question.

Hussein saw LeMura’s comments in the meeting as “very contradictory” to LeMura’s commitment to open dialogue in the campuswide email.

Hussein said that she felt LeMura had positioned herself as a victim in the conversation, by describing how she and her family members had been targeted with thousands of vitriolic “communications,” as LeMura called them, and even death threats. Hussein said that the hate directed toward LeMura was wrong, but said it shifted the focus of the conversation away from the more than 70,000 people who Israel has killed in Gaza.

Abu Toha’s response to LeMura’s email, first reported on by Drop Site News, prompted a near-immediate deluge of criticism. Several local, national and international organizations and commentators urged LeMura to apologize to Abu Toha and retract the email, including: 

One of the most prominent voices in that chorus belonged to James Zogby, a Le Moyne graduate and donor who co-founded the Arab American Institute and serves as its president. 

Zogby published a column comparing LeMura’s actions to an incident at the University of Michigan. He said in a live virtual interview with Abu Toha that he felt compelled to write the column because he believed the incidents reflected a growing pattern of attempts by pro-Israel groups and donors to silence discourse on Palestine and Israel.

“Because it happened to Mosab Abu Toha, I was especially troubled, because he’s a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer whose poetry is so sensitive and thoughtful, and the students were moved by what he had to say and were deeply troubled when what he had to say was viewed as so controversial and threatening,” Zogby said.

In the sit down with students, Le Moyne Chaplain Richard “mugs” Maloy praised the school for “taking a stand against cancel culture” by hosting Abu Toha, and defended LeMura’s “free academic response.”

A student challenged that.

“If she wants to call it a free academic response, I’m not gonna arm-wrestle her over it, but I think that it was a response written under pressure,” the student said.

LeMura did not say whether she was under any pressure nor did she identify who may have contacted her with concerns about the lecture, but she made multiple allusions to protecting the institution.

“If I had to write that letter over again, I would. Based on what I know,” LeMura said in the meeting with students.

Hussein left the interview unsure where LeMura stood on Palestine — or if LeMura had any stance at all — but said she won’t let the specter of administrative suppression prevent her from speaking her mind and organizing to support free expression on campus.

As Hussein sees more people around the world voicing support for Palestine and describing the reality of Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank, Hussein said, she feels encouraged to continue speaking up for herself and for Palestine.

Hussein praised a student at Fayetteville-Manlius, who is suing the school after the school issued an apology letter disavowing the student’s recitation of slain Gazan scholar Refaat Alareer’s prophetic poem “If I Must Die,” which has become an internationally galvanizing piece since the author was killed by an Israeli airstrike.

“I feel like the best thing we could do is continue to speak up for ourselves and advocate for what we know is right and what we know we can do to support the Palestinian cause, regardless of backlash from her, or anybody else,” Hussein said.

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Patrick McCarthy is a staff reporter at Central Current covering government and politics. A graduate of Syracuse University’s Maxwell and Newhouse Schools, McCarthy was born and raised in Syracuse and...