By Glenn Greenwald
A children’s speech pathologist who has worked for the last
nine years with developmentally disabled, autistic, and speech-impaired
elementary school students in Austin, Texas, has been told she can no
longer work with the public school district after she refused to sign an
oath vowing that she “does not” and “will not” engage in a boycott of
Israel or “otherwise tak[e] any action that is intended to inflict
economic harm” on that foreign nation. A lawsuit on her behalf was
filed early Monday morning in a federal court in the Western District
of Texas alleging a violation of her First Amendment right of free
speech.
The child language specialist, Bahia Amawi, is a U.S. citizen who
received a master’s degree in speech pathology in 1999 and, since then,
has specialized in evaluations for young children with language
difficulties (see video below). Amawi was born in Austria and has lived
in the U.S. for the last 30 years, fluently speaks three languages
(English, German, and Arabic), and has four U.S.-born American children
of her own.
Amawi began working in 2009 on a contract basis with the Pflugerville
Independent School District, which includes Austin, to provide
assessments and support for school children from the county’s growing
Arabic-speaking immigrant community. The children with whom she has
worked span the ages of 3 to 11. Ever since her work for the school
district began in 2009, her contract was renewed each year with no
controversy or problem.
But this year, all of that changed. On August 13, the school district
once again offered to extend her contract for another year by sending
her essentially the same contract and set of certifications she has
received and signed at the end of each year since 2009.
Click here for the full article.
Source: The Intercept_
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