Until recently, Dwayne Booth was a professor of communication at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Pennsylvania, where he taught courses on political cartooning. Booth is also a cartoonist and publishes his political cartoons under the pseudonym Mr. Fish.
In March 2024, he was accused of anti-Semitism for his cartoons and more than a few voices called for his head. It all started in The Washington Free Beacon, where a story titled"Pennsylvania professor behind grotesque anti-Semitic cartoons" was published, which some media outlets took it upon themselves to elevate to a news story.
University of Pennsylvania interim president Larry Jameson criticised Mr Fish's cartoons in a statement posted on the university's social media in which he said the cartoons do not reflect his views or those of the university, describing them as"objectionable, anti-Semitic symbols and inconsistent with our efforts to fight hate".
However, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP-Penn) felt that the University should not sanction Booth for his illustrations and condemned the selective harassment to which he was being subjected in a statement appealing to the AAUP's 1940 Statement of Principles.
In this article you can read the full story about that event and a gallery of its vignettes.
A year later, in March 2025, he was fired and has not missed the opportunity to point out the cowardice of the university's administrators. He posted on his Patreon page:
As predicted by colleagues, comrades, fellow contrarians, my own instincts and friends, I was dismissed from the University of Pennsylvania yesterday. The news came to me by email, not by phone call or in-person meeting on campus, despite the fact that I have been teaching at the Annenberg School for Communication for 11 years with much love and a deep commitment to my students and the radical humanitarianism I try to show daily in the artwork you all so kindly support. That said, I can only assume that there has been a great deal of panic and anxiety behind closed doors at the university as the Republican Party attempts to destroy any and all institutions with the potential to challenge the disorienting attacks on democracy and academia by right-wing nationalists.
I was informed that the reason for the termination was budgetary, which I believe is the same reason they gave Jesus just before they crucified him, and Malcolm X just before they shot him, and what they told Eugene Debs, Susan B. Anthony and Lenny Bruce just before they imprisoned them. I'm joking, of course. I know it was for budgetary reasons, since I wasn't the only one in the purge. The reality - and something that, unfortunately, is not unique to Penn - is that colleges and universities across the country have been far too complicit with largely Republican-led efforts to target students and faculty members committed to any speech in support of trans/black/immigrant rights, and women's rights, free speech, independent press, academic freedom, and medical research - speech that also expresses a bold critique of right-wing nationalism, genocide, apartheid, fascism, and specifically the Israeli attack on Palestine.
In fact, the University of Pennsylvania has spent the last year and a half voluntarily turning over the private emails of faculty and students to Congressional committees charged with crushing open debate, honest enquiry and dissent on campus, and then targeting those who refuse to cooperate with these draconian censorship tactics by threatening them with suspension, expulsion or dismissal. The cowardice and complete lack of courage demonstrated by the UPenn administration has ruined the lives of a large number of faculty and students I know personally, as if total capitulation to the demands of the MAGA bullies and thugs will somehow finally ameliorate the suffering and prevent the collapse of higher education.
Tetx of the cartoon: "I am happy to report that after months of hard work to normalizing the cmandatory capitulation of students and faculty to the mercenary demands of right-wing ideologues and apologists for genocide, white nationalism and fascism, me and the provost get to keep our jobs and you get to tell your kids and grandkids that you helped shape the curriculum at a leading Ivy League universityto make higher education all about celebrating totalitarianism and being 100%" subservient to the state.
In a special The Marc Steiner Show recorded on 6 May, Marc sat down with Booth in the TRNN studio in Baltimore to discuss the events leading up to his dismissal, the purpose and effects of political art, and how to respond to the repression of art and dissent as genocide unfolds and fascism rises.
If you have time to listen to it, the interview leaves a lot of interesting reflections. If you prefer the transcript, you can find it here.
Related: Israel breaks records in media censorship (In spanish)
In 2024, Israel's military censor banned the publication of 1,635 articles and partially redacted 6,265 others as part of a broader attack on press freedom.
