That cartoon above, showing apparent Zionists (as in “Jews”) sipping Gazan blood like wine, is probably the most outrageous of political cartoonist Dwayne Booth’s works…I don’t know, maybe this one is..

All a matter of taste, I guess. The ethics question is, now what, if anything?

Booth is a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School of Communication having joined the school as an adjunct faculty member in 2015. Political cartooning is certainly a valid courss of study. He currently teaches two classes, but since Hamas’s October 7 terror attack, his off-campus cartooning has become especially controversial.

Booth publishes political cartoons under the pen name “Mr. Fish.” One of his classes teaches students the political cartooning art by exploring “the purpose and significance of image-based communication as an unparalleled propagator of both noble and nefarious ideas,” according to Penn’s website. “Work presented will be chosen for its unique ability to demonstrate the inflammatory effect of weaponized visual jokes, uncensored commentary, and critical thinking on a society so often perplexed by artistic free expression and radicalized creative candor.”

You can see more of Booth’s anti-Israel cartoons here. As far as I can determine, there is not sufficient basis for disciplining him or ending his association with the school. Political cartooning, though I personally view it as a crude, over-rated and deceitful form of editorial, is by nature extreme in device and approach. Booth’s own political opinions and obvious anger at Israel that he expresses as “Mr. Fish” or on social media are not relevant to his value teaching the political cartooning craft, and would seem to be squarely within the margins of both academic freedom and the first Amendment, provided that his commentary in class and on campus are not directed at Jewish students.

However, if a school, like the University of Pennsylvania, decided that, at a time when there are unusual tensions around the Gaza-Israel conflict its lecturer should cool his public fervor or consider another teaching position elsewhere, that would be a fully ethically defensible position. He’s right at the line now.

He might even have crossed it.