I am a Trinity alumna, class of ‘96, and have donated to this institution every single year since graduation. My daughter is also a Trinity graduate, and had Sajida Jalalzai as a professor. She described her as one of the best she ever had.
The decision to deny Jalalzai tenure is a disgrace, and I am ashamed of my alma mater.
The facts speak for themselves: She had unanimous support from her department, unanimous support from the Promotion and Tenure Commission, positive reviews at every stage of her career and a book contract. There was not a single dissent in two separate votes. And yet President Beasley and Provost Mustain overruled all of it. The Trinitonian’s article states that they cited a redefinition of peer review that Jalalzai’s own department never required. It appears to have been invented to justify a predetermined outcome.
The timing is not a coincidence. The only controversy surrounding Jalalzai emerged after she participated in a post-Oct. 7 teach-in on Israel and Palestine. To deny tenure to a Muslim woman who spoke openly on one of the defining issues of our time, hiding behind a pretextual academic rationale, is not principled administration. It is retaliation and cowardice. It is a betrayal of the academic freedom Trinity claims to champion.
I was taught at Trinity to think critically and to stand up for what is right. This decision stands for the opposite of everything I learned there.
I will not be donating to Trinity this year. I will not resume my support until this decision is reversed and Jalalzai is granted the tenure she has earned.
Aisha Sultan
Trinity University, class of ‘96
Luis (Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa) • May 5, 2026 at 6:30 pm
I pledge to do more than refuse to donate. Trinity threw away Dr. Jalalzai, an action which has quickly promoted open displays of hate against Muslims in our community. As a brown person, I fully understand that the new Trinity will work to suppress the truths, the knowledge, and the history which protect the place of brown people like myself in the American nation. I pledge to share the story of Trinity’s betray with my highschool college counselors, HS mentors, HS teachers, past and current neighbors. Previously, I reserved the highest praises for Trinity alone. The truth is if I had been aware of this story while applying for college today, I would have no hesitation removing Trinity from my college list. My message: My degree from Trinity now signifies that I went to a school where brown people are punished, intimated, and exposed to abuse for speaking their minds, so that zionist parents and their recorders can be the only voices on campus. I hate my degree. I hate the words Trinity University. I’m being made to look like a complete fool for going there. All ivy leagues had encampments, friends at Colorado College to CUNY encamped; all schools with names far ahead of Trinity in glory. Those school I recommend even if I don’t support Hamas because free speech by students and faculty makes the university legitimate. Trinity no longer passes my accreditation process. My donations mean nothing. So let me show my friends in Texas, PNW, SW, and Tiktok what Trinity has become. Let’s watch Beasely bring that acceptance rate past 40% and be forced to commit to a vision – The Israeli University of San Antonio (no decolonized brown people or their friends welcome).
Culin Peddada • May 5, 2026 at 5:13 am
Without Dr. Jalalzai Trinity is not the institution I attended, nor one I desire to nourish and protect anymore. This is an immense loss to Trinity’s liberal arts curriculum. In 2019, I matriculated at Trinity unsure what I was going to study, with some vague interest in the social sciences. I spent my first year sampling different disciplines while fulfilling some requirements. Spring semester, I took Dr. Jalalzai’s class on the Qur’an and Dr. Cabral’s class introducing mathematical proof and some modern developments in mathematics. Wow, my first experience of what would be many interdisciplinary syntheses fostered by Trinity professors. Imagine this, a religion class with a creative component. Okay that is a little uncommon. But add this: the class is on Islam (Me: Charlie Hebdo… Muslims don’t tolerate us being creative with Islam right?!). For one project, we were to make a drawing. I constructed an elaborate geometric figure (based on a real dome in Iraq). In another project, we learned to recite in Arabic the Surah Al Faitah (a fundamental document of human orality – like The Lord’s Prayer or Sanskrit mantras). I came to the conclusion that Dr. Jalalzai taught like a mathematician. We constructed the figure first for ourselves before measuring by other instruments. Such an experiment yielded me the greatest insight into what people pull off cognitively and call faith (and I say this after having taken a seminar on Kierkegaard at Trinity). After having this epiphany, I remember talking to Dr. Cabral in his office about how mathematical thinking functioned in my life differently. He strongly encouraged me to take some philosophy classes. Three years later, in some defining moments, I defended my thesis in Philosophy.
“Universities tend to become places of great intellectual conformity”, I remember a Trinity professor once telling me as to dissuade my naive but sincere desire to get a phd and devote my life to intellect. At the time, I could not understand. Silently I thought that Trinity felt academically free. I was finishing up my degree when I learned about Al-Aqsa Flood on Oct 7th. Basically, one of the first people who broaches the subject is a friend in Hillel. He has a simple request: do I know of any meetings among pro-Palestinian groups and if I’ve been what students and teachers were at them. Some really disgusting behavior on his part. Still though, I thought Trinity was intellectually free: Dr. Jalalzai spoke and the crowd went wild and everything seemed normal; Trinity students in the foyer were rehashing conversations held every semester about Fanon, Said, Columbus, and settler colonialism.
Some say the civility of discourse at the teach-in hurt people. At Trinity, especially studying history, I never stopped hearing things that hurt, even things that hurt my representation of my religion and my nation. I think Trinity professors in the humanities promoted those uncomfortable experiences through which I learned my most valuable lesson: the one that taught a shy kid to ignore being hurt so as to talk to anyone. My first job was working side by side with Mexican migrant laborers. Next, I worked amongst people quitting to join ICE. I’ve convinced my boss, a Floridan republican Bush and Iraq War supporter to protest genocide at the ballot and vote neither blue nor red. I got trans co-workers to not vote, smash the propaganda that “Palestinians hate trans people” with the view “no one is free unless we are all free”. These conversations could have happened at Trinity back in the day, and I left school with the desire to share that intellectual experience with everyone, especially working people often deprived of the dignity. This year, Trinity closes a chapter, no longer one of my favorite places on Earth nor even a school, since those challenge our nation to think rigorously. Dr. Jalalzai brought to Trinity a gate through which I entered my education. Beasely thinks they can demolish that starting point, the seed of knowledge, and expect me to call the university’s new scarred and horrid face alma mater.
Huma Ahmed • Apr 30, 2026 at 11:53 am
I’m ashamed, too. That’s not the Trinity I know and love. Bigotry has no place at Trinity. Open political discourse is what I loved most about my time there.