Dwayne Booth #

Introduction #

Dwayne Booth is an American political cartoonist who taught as a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication and publishes under the pen name “Mr. Fish.” In February 2024, the Washington Free Beacon reported that Booth was the person behind the Mr. Fish byline and catalogued Gaza war cartoons he had published, images the outlet characterized as antisemitic. Penn’s interim president, Larry Jameson, called the cartoons “reprehensible” but declined to discipline Booth, citing the school’s “bedrock commitment to open expression.” One year later, in March 2025, Penn laid Booth off, telling him the reason was budgetary — a dismissal the Free Beacon and JNS both reported coincided with the Trump administration’s decision to freeze $175 million in federal funding to the university.

Background Information #

Booth taught at Penn’s Annenberg School for Communication as a lecturer and built a parallel career as an editorial cartoonist signing his work “Mr. Fish.” Per JNS, he had published cartoons about the Gaza war since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. His cartoons frequently accompanied columns by former New York Times reporter Chris Hedges, whose columns routinely accuse Israel of “genocide” and compare the Jewish state to Nazi Germany; Booth later defended the images by saying anyone who viewed them “by themselves” was missing “necessary context.” The Free Beacon’s report reproduced several of the cartoons, including one depicting Zionists sipping Gazan blood from wine glasses — a version of the ancient blood libel, per the outlet — another showing Jews in a Nazi concentration camp holding signs reading “Stop the Holocaust In Gaza” and “Gaza, The World’s Biggest Concentration Camp,” and a third depicting a Nazi flag with a Star of David drawn in place of a swastika.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation #

Characterization note. The word “antisemitic” describes the cartoons as characterized by the Washington Free Beacon and JNS, the outlets that documented them; the cartoons themselves are established through their publication, as described above. Penn never characterized Booth’s March 2025 layoff as a dismissal for cause — the university cited budgetary reasons, and Booth’s own Patreon announcement was the primary public account of the termination.

The controversy turned on the cartoons’ imagery and on Booth’s identity. One cartoon showed Zionists in front of a joint American and Israeli flag drinking Gazan blood from wine glasses, captioned “Who invited that lousy anti-Semite,” a reference to a dove carrying an olive branch; JNS wrote that it “seemed to use the medieval blood libel against Jews.” Another depicted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu covered in blood, holding a knife and a crumpled Palestinian flag. The Free Beacon’s February 2024 report, which identified the Annenberg lecturer as the man behind the Mr. Fish pen name, made Booth a national flashpoint in the debate over campus antisemitism, but Penn initially kept him on the faculty, and he continued teaching through at least the fall 2024 semester. The reckoning came in March 2025: the Free Beacon reported the layoff on March 22, 2025, and JNS framed it as part of a wider pattern of universities moving to comply with the Trump administration’s executive orders on campus antisemitism, after the administration had withheld $400 million from Columbia University.

Public Reaction and Consequences #

Jameson had described the cartoons as “reprehensible” when they surfaced in February 2024 but made clear he would not sanction Booth or remove him from the faculty, invoking Penn’s “bedrock commitment to open expression.” Penn’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors rallied to Booth’s defense and threatened to investigate the university if he was punished. The union wrote, “The targeted harassment of Booth was instigated by the Washington Free Beacon, a publication known for political provocation whose activities conform to a well-known pattern,” and, “It singled out a faculty member who had criticized the war in Gaza and portrayed him as an antisemite, which predictably generated threats of personal violence against him and calls for the university to discipline him.” Booth announced his unemployment in a Patreon post reported by the Free Beacon on March 22, 2025, writing that he was informed “the reason for the termination was budgetary, which I think is the same reason they gave to 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 jailing them. I jest, of course.” He added that he would be “losing 3k a month to the fascist monsters devouring campuses.”

Current Status #

After the layoff, Booth wrote that the American Association of University Professors, whose Penn chapter had defended him, along with “some attorneys,” were “looking into the matter” on his behalf. He accused colleges and universities nationwide of being “way too complicit” with a “largely Republican-led effort” to target students and faculty members for their speech, including criticism of “the Israeli assault on Palestine.” He wrote, “The cowardice and complete lack of courage demonstrated by the UPenn administration has ruined the lives of a great number of professors and students whom I know personally.” Penn, the White House, and the Department of Education did not respond to the Free Beacon’s requests for comment.

Impact on Their Career/Life #

The layoff ended Booth’s lectureship at Annenberg and converted a year-old controversy into a referendum on the limits of campus expression. Supporters cast the dismissal as retaliation for anti-war political speech; the outlets that exposed his cartoons treated it as accountability that arrived only once federal money was at stake. What is documented is narrower: a lecturer whose cartoons were published, whose own university’s president called them “reprehensible,” and who lost his position a year after Penn had invoked free expression to keep him — with Penn citing budgetary reasons and the Trump administration’s $175 million funding freeze landing at the same time. Whether the decision was genuinely budgetary has not been publicly resolved; the Free Beacon noted the contrast with the school’s earlier defense of Booth, and JNS placed the layoff among universities complying with the administration’s orders to preserve funding. Booth compared the budgetary explanation to justifications history later condemned, before adding, “I jest, of course.”