Ex-University Professor Blows the Whistle on Shocking Prejudice

In our first lawsuit of 2022, we are representing a professor who taught at the University of Maryland for 10 years until she was fired in 2017 for her pro-Israel views and her Jewish faith. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) advised the university to settle the case. They refused, and so we filed a lawsuit in federal district court in Maryland.
Our client, Dr. Melissa Landa explained what exactly happened in this case:
"I formed an alumni organization at my alma mater at Oberlin College when I discovered that there was a virulent antisemitic professor there . . . I began to appear in the press representing this alumni group and essentially, we were calling for her dismissal. And once that began to happen, I began to experience a hostile work environment at the University of Maryland. My superiors began to pull away from me. My associate chair with whom I was supposed to be delivering a paper at a conference canceled and said he would not deliver the paper with me. When I went to Israel for Passover, I was reprimanded and told I was out of bounds from university policy and I needed to come back. . . . I had authorization. I was covering my classes. I was following university protocol. . . . I came back early, my Passover was ruined. . . . On the first night of Passover, I received a hostile email from my superior telling me that I was basically at risk of losing my job. I came back almost immediately. . . . I absolutely had approval to go. . . . She did not respond to my attempts to reach her. Things just went from bad to worse. . . . So, there was a sequence of events that would happen I would take one action that related to my Jewish identity and my Zionist identity and I was then punished. And this went on for over a year."
ACLJ Senior Counsel Mark Goldfeder explained the legal process of this case:
"Just to give a little context – Dr. Landa . . . was an award-winning professor, extremely popular, had no problems until she started expressing her Jewish faith more openly. And essentially, when that happened and her supervisor started to withdrawal from her, Dr. Landa experienced this as the religious discrimination that it was. She eventually reported religious discrimination to the college diversity officer. When she came back from that Passover trip . . . that’s when she met with the supervisor in person. And the supervisor admitted that she had granted Dr. Landa permission for the trip and said that she never should have, and she had never realized that Passover is so long. In that same meeting, the supervisor also accused Dr. Landa of somehow using her with her religion. That’s when it really crossed a line. That’s when Dr. Landa filed her first religious discrimination complaint to the college diversity officer."
Antisemitism is an issue on college campuses, and around the world. The ACLJ remains committed to defending victims of prejudice through our legal work and global advocacy.