Lawfare Project represents SUNY Downstate student who was dismissed from program after reporting professor's antisemitic comments
The Lawfare Project is representing a student who was recently dismissed from the Physician Assistant program at SUNY Downstate Medical School. The student alleges that her dismissal from the program was in retaliation for reporting antisemitic comments that were routinely made in the classroom by one of her professors.
The student enrolled in the SUNY Downstate Physician Assistant 27-month program starting in May 2022. During her tenure in the program, she witnessed multiple instances of antisemitic comments by her professor. For example, the professor would say “let me walk over to Jerusalem” when approaching Jewish students and would mockingly refer to religiously observant students wearing kippas as “rabbis.” After an extensive absence due to being extremely ill, the student reported the disturbing comments to administration.
The student's complaints were summarily dismissed, and a campaign of discrimination and retaliation was launched against her. She was treated with disdain and prejudice at every turn and was forced to take her make-up exam while on official medical leave, in violation of the school’s policy. She was saddled with unfair conditions under which it would be nearly impossible for her (or any student) to perform successfully. For instance, she was unnecessarily forced to carry out a mock physical exam of a patient under the watchful eye of a professor against whom she had filed a discrimination complaint. She was also given an undeserved failing grade. All of this was done for the sole purpose of stunting the student’s ability to succeed in order to create a pretext for discharging her from the program.
“When our client courageously reported her professor’s continuous antisemitic remarks in the classroom to the administration, the institution's response was to stifle her voice by removing her from the program, rather than addressing the core issue of the discriminatory comments,” said Ziporah Reich, Director of Litigation at The Lawfare Project “Anything short of unequivocally putting an end to antisemitism in the classroom and reinstating our client into the program would be a grave injustice to her and the other Jewish students in the program.”
The student is working to appeal her dismissal with the assistance of The Lawfare Project, which continues to fight cases of antisemitism at universities in the United States and Canada.
“What happened to this student is a reflection of the normalization of Jew-hatred within the university system. Administrators are unable to look beyond their own privilege and biases to consider the experience of a young minority student facing discrimination. Instead, they find it more convenient to silence the student than to address the issue and institute any systemic change,” said Brooke Goldstein, founder and Executive Director of The Lawfare Project. “We stand with our client and every Jewish student that faces any form of discrimination, bias, and hatred.”