Campus Watch January 11, 2024

Lawsuit: Israeli Student Claims Chicago Art School Professor Targeted Her

An Israeli student filed a lawsuit against the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) alleging that one of her professors retaliated against her for filing a complaint and targeted the student based on her Israeli identity.

The Daily Wire reported that the student, identified simply as “Shiran,” had filed a complaint to the SAIC’s Title IX office against Professor Chun-Shan Yi after Yi accepted a request from Shiran’s classmate Jannah Sellars to present her joint project with Shiran separately because Sellars couldn’t “work closely with any individual who denies the genocide so clearly taking place before us.” Yi allegedly failed Shiran on the project, stating that she “mostly interacted with non-BIPOC-presenting students during skillshare. Overall, it seems that there was some discomfort during your presentation.” Shiran’s classmates also gave her a failing grade in the peer review portion of the project, claiming that she plagiarized Sellars, per The Daily Wire.

After Shiran filed the complaint, Yi allegedly created a last-minute assignment asking students to respond to “depictions of genital, physical, verbal or sexual abuse, violence and trauma incited [sic] on children and youth,” including an Israeli father scolding his son as being a “bad boy” and Israeli soldiers engaging in violence against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The lawsuit alleges that, because Shiran was the only Israeli in the class, the last-minute assignment was aimed at her. A spokesperson for the school told The Daily Wire that SAIC denounces antisemitism and all other forms of discrimination, but the school is not commenting on the lawsuit’s allegations.

SAIC Prof Who Said “Israelis Are Pigs” Out from Chicago Art School

An associate professor who referred to Israelis as “pigs” in a social media is no longer working in her position at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC).

The Daily Wire reported that the professor, Mika Tosca, had written in an Oct. 17 social media post, “Israelis are pigs. Savages. Very very bad people. Irredeemable excrement. After the past week, if your eyes aren’t open to the crimes against humanity that Israel is committing and has committed for decades, and will continue to commit, then I suggest you open them. It’s disgusting and grotesque. May they all rot in hell.” She later apologized for the post, acknowledging that her “words perpetuated harmful stereotypes.”

The school told The Daily Wire that Tosca is no longer employed by the school, but did not specify why she was no longer there. Tosca herself announced on her since-deleted X account that she would no longer be at the school starting Jan. 1; her post concluded by stating, “PALESTINE WILL BE FREE” in all capital letters, per The Daily Wire.

GWU Professor Accused of Targeting Jewish Israeli Students Now Works for Qatari School

Lara Sheehi, who was plagued by allegations of antisemitism during her tenure as an assistant professor of psychology at George Washington University (GWU), is now working at a Qatari school.

The Algemeiner reported that they obtained an email from Sheehi announcing her departure to her colleagues, calling her decision “difficult” and that she will “miss” her students. GWU confirmed to The Algemeiner that Sheehi is no longer employed at the school. Per The Algemeiner, Sheehi is now an associate professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies.

The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) is reportedly  investigating a complaint filed by StandWithUs alleging that that Sheehi targeted and invalidated Jewish Israeli students in her class and then retaliated against them when they complained to university administrators. Sheehi defended herself in a lengthy CounterPunch post in February 2023, arguing that StandWithUs “willfully misrepresents facts” in their complaint and were targeting a pro-Palestinian Arab woman. The following month, GWU President Mark S. Wrighton announced that a third-party investigation conducted by the law firm Crowell & Moring “found no evidence substantiating the allegations of discriminatory and retaliatory conduct alleged in the complaint.” 

Ohio State Suspends Student Group for Using PFLP Logo

Ohio State University (OSU) suspended a campus student group for using a logo associated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terror group.

OSU spokesperson Dave Isaacs told The Lantern, a student newspaper, that the university is investigating the Central Ohio Revolutionary Socialists (CORS) for allegedly “disregarding university directives, being non-responsive to meeting requests from the organization’s advisors and university leaders, and dissemination of materials that include a logo associated with a terrorist organization.” According to The Lantern, CORS issued a statement saying that “specific content was not given to their leaders and none warrant significant threat to anyone at the university.”