A university professor who resigned from her position following a Title VI antisemitism investigation, and another who organized large-scale anti-Israel demonstrations, are among several controversial speakers scheduled to speak at an event on Friday hosted by the University of Washington. 

The day-long conference, called “The World as Palestine: On Advocacy, Activism, and Justice,” is organized by the Middle Eastern Studies department and is scheduled to be held in the university’s student union building. 

Andrea Brower, a former instructor in a “Solidarity and Social Justice” program at Gonzaga University in eastern Washington, is scheduled to speak during the program’s opening panel, “Reflections from Eastern Washington’s Palestinian Liberation Movement.” She resigned in 2024 after the school opened an antisemitism investigation into the protests she led on campus against Israel’s war in Gaza and her criticism of the university’s investment in companies with ties to Israel.

The panel will examine “academic dissent, critical thought, and resistance with reflections from Eastern Washington’s Palestinian liberation movement,” according to its registration page.  

Another speaker on the panel will be Majid Sharifi, the director and professor of international affairs at Eastern Washington University. When Iran fired hundreds of ballistic missiles and drones at Israel in October 2024, Sharifi told CBS News Miami that Iran was “defending itself” after its “sovereignty was violated” by Israel’s assasination months prior of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. 

The third speaker alongside Brower and Sharifi is Kathryn DePaolis, an associate professor and interim chair and director of the School of Social Work at Eastern Washington University. DePaolis helped create a new group called the Inland Northwest Coalition for the Liberation of Palestine two months after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks. During Israel’s war in Gaza, the organization staged Palestinian “die-ins” in front of the Spokane courthouse. 

“The event isn’t about the scholarship of activism, which would be different — it’s activism itself,” a Jewish faculty member at UW told Jewish Insider. “It’s using state resources to promote an ideology and worldview that contributes to antisemitism and anti-Zionism on campus.” 

Other panel topics are “Lessons from the Palestinian and Filipino Struggles for Liberation” and “Activism and Civic Engagement in Washington State.” Laila Taji, an author speaking on the latter panel, has ties to the radical student group Students United for Palestinian Equality & Return (SUPER UW), which led a destructive protest on campus last year over the school’s ties to Boeing — and Boeing’s ties to the IDF — that caused more than $1 million in damages to the university’s engineering building. 

The event will also screen “The Palestine Exception,” a documentary about “professors and students as they join calls for a ceasefire and divestment from companies that do business with Israel and face waves of crackdown from administrators, the media, the police and politicians,” according to the film’s synopsis. 

Neither the UW administration nor Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson responded to requests for comment from JI about the selection of speakers for the event at the university, which is a public college. 

The event comes days after students from SUPER UW who were suspended and arrested last spring for their participation in the engineering building vandalism were allowed to return to campus, Victor Balta, a spokesperson for the university, confirmed to JI. “The student conduct hearing process has been completed and the students have been found responsible for violations of the student conduct code and held accountable. The students were out of class and banned from campus for three quarters,” said Balta. Twenty-one students were suspended at the time.

“Suspensions also resulted in forfeiture of tuition paid or the repayment of tuition by any student who must remain in good standing in order to receive financial aid, such as tuition exemption grants for graduate students or work study. Once a suspension is concluded, any outstanding balances due must be paid in order to be eligible for re-enrollment,” Balta continued.

The students could still face criminal charges, though none have been brought in the nine months since the protest. The incident also led the Trump administration’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism to open a review into the university. 

SUPER UW was suspended as an official student organization in December 2024 after its members were charged with “vandalism,” “unauthorized keys, entry, or use,” “failure to comply” and “disruption and obstruction” by the school’s administration, according to the group. As a result, SUPER UW does not have access to school resources but can still gather on campus. 

In August, Secure Community Network, found that a manifesto released by SUPER UW — which the student group published on Medium shortly before its building takeover began — was inspired by a foreign terrorist entity. 

The document praised Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel as a “heroic victory” and said the group looks to “the rich history of struggle in our university for strength and inspiration as we take action.” SUPER UW also released a statement of solidarity with the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, a fundraising arm of the terror group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine that was designated as a terror group by the U.S. Treasury Department in October 2024.