A microbiologist at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, known as “WokeScientist” on her Instagram account, took to her social media page to defend Hamas for the terrorist network’s barbaric attack on Israelis.
Dr. Ayesha Khan, a VUMC resident and clinical fellow in microbiology in the Department of Pathology, Microbiology, and Immunology, insisted on her Instagram page that “a ceasefire is not enough.” She demands “an end to the settler colonial occupation of Palestine, an end to the siege of Gaza, an end to the occupation.”
“If you care about social justice, equity, liberation in any form — then support the Palestinian push for total liberation by any means necessary,” the woke microbiologist wrote. “The oppressed deserve to resist their oppressors by any means necessary.”
“Quite frankly, the opinions of privileged people who don’t have to experience the brutality that Palestinians are faced with … don’t matter. But I assure you, this is what you would you if you were in their shoes,” Khan posted.
A spokeswoman for Vanderbilt University Medical Center told The Tennessee Star that the healthcare provider is aware of the posts but is not commenting on a personnel matter.
Khan’s Instagram page is filled with anti-Israel rhetoric, including promoting an “All Out for Palestine” Rally and Vigil slated for 4-7 p.m. Sunday in Nashville.
According to her LinkedIn page:
Dr. Ayesha Khan is a Clinical Microbiologist and Infectious Diseases Scientist specializing in Antimicrobial Resistance and Diagnostics; a grassroots community organizer, writer, art activist, and abolitionist educator decoding the science of social justice and collectivism. Ayesha is the innovator behind Abolitionist Science- a novel field that deploys research-driven scientific strategies to abolish capitalist carceral systems while simultaneously constructing equitable community-led systems from healthcare, public safety to education.
Ayesha advocacy focuses on combatting carceral systems, building a framework for educational equity, decolonizing healthcare and biomedical research, movements for Black and Palestinian liberation, minority rights in South Asia, and migrant worker rights in the Middle East among others. She is also an educator and mentor with expertise in global racial health disparities, racial justice in medicine, decolonized mental health, abolitionist theory & praxis, neurodiversity through a social justice lens, childhood trauma and complex-PTSD, neocolonialism and decolonized geopolitics.”
On her Instagram page, Khan asserts, “My views & opinions are only my own and not reflective of my employer.” She claims she has faced “suppression of all forms” for talking about Palestine — “targeted attacks, surveillance, death threats, physical assaults or zionists going after my job asking me to be fired etc. which is all happening now again.”
As of Friday, Khan appears to remain employed at VUMC.
She insists that what is happening in Gaza is “genocide, extermination & ethnic cleansing.”
What the woke scientist doesn’t note are the 1,400-plus Israelis tortured, raped, murdered, and the scores of hostages that her Hamas “freedom fighters” claimed in their surprise October 7 terrorist attacks on Israel. She doesn’t note that The Hamas Charter, or the Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement, supported by many Palestinians, calls for obliteration or dissolution of Israel.
“Ayesha guides people in their journey to cope with and divest from capitalist and colonial systems… Ayesha is an Afro-Indian, nonbinary (any pronouns), queer, Hindu-Muslim-Animist,” wrote Robby Starbuck, a music video director and former congressional candidate on his X account.
“@VUMChealth needs to fire this terrorist sympathizer immediately,” Robby Starbuck, a music video director and former congressional candidate, said.
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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
Photo “Ayesha Khan” by Ayesha Khan.
