RSS
Explosive Lawsuit Accuses Northwestern University of Reverse Racism in Hiring
Signs cover the fence at a pro-Palestinian encampment at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. on April 28, 2024. Photo: Max Herman via Reuters Connect.
Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law discriminated against white male applicants in its faculty hiring process, according to a new federal lawsuit citing as cause the US Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling that affirmative action in higher education is unconstitutional.
The sharply worded complaint, filed by Faculty, Alumni, and Opposed to Racial Preferences, opens a new front in the conservative movement’s attempt to proscribe what scholars and activists have described as an insidious pattern of reverse discrimination, which, while intending to assuage the lingering effects of racism in the US, has fostered a new “anti-white” bigotry that penalizes individual merit and undermines the spirit of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement.
Taking aim at “inclusive” hiring practices, the suit focuses on a component of affirmative action in higher education that is not widely known among the American public, such as “cluster hiring” — programs which aim to hire bunches of minority professors at a time — and “diversity recruitment” stipulations which all but guarantee that scores of white men, or individuals perceived as white, are denied employment in academia.
“For decades, left-wing faculty and administrators have been thumbing their noses at federal anti-discrimination statues and openly discriminating on account of race and sex when appointing professors,” court documents filed in the US District Court of Illinois say. “They do this by hiring women and racial minorities with mediocre and undistinguished records over white men who have better credentials, better scholarship, and better teaching ability.”
It continues, “The practice, long known as ‘affirmative action,’ is firmly entrenched at institutions of higher learning and aggressively pushed by leftist ideologues on faculty-appointment committees and in university [diversity, equity, and inclusion] offices. But it is prohibited by federal law, which bans universities that accept federal funds from discriminating on account of race or sex in their hiring decisions.”
The complaint goes on to allege that high-level officials went to great lengths to conceal the law school’s allegedly discriminatory hiring practices, going as far as banning frank discussions about them on a digital messaging forum to avoid “litigation risk.” This code of silence, it argues, enabled the rejection of a job application submitted by Professor Eugene Volokh, a “renowned legal scholar” who has taught law for three decades and is cited in numerous opinions issued by the US Supreme Court. Volokh also clerked for former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman ever to serve on the country’s highest court.
“The idea of appointing Professor Volokh was supported by many of Northwestern’s public-law faculty,” the complaint says. “But the appointments committee that year was chaired by former dean Dan Rodriguez, who repeatedly pushed for race-based hirings as dean and refused to even invite Professor Volokh to interview. Because of Rodriguez’s intransigence, Professor Volokh’s candidacy was never even presented to the Northwestern faculty for a vote, while candidates with mediocre and undistinguished records were interviewed and received offers because of their preferred demographic characteristics.”
Volokh was “blocked” from teaching at the law school because he is white, the complaint continues, noting that another white candidate, Ernie Young, was denied a job despite holding a prestigious position at Duke Law School and publishing a mountain of legal scholarship in the thirty years since he graduated from Harvard Law School in 1993. It adds that Pritzker Law was allegedly so committed to excluding accomplished white men from its faculty that it hired Destiny Peery, a Black woman of color who was awarded a tenure-track position “even though the faculty at Northwestern was fully aware of her abysmal academic record as a student at the law school” and had “expressed concerns that Peery was unqualified for an academic appointment and incapable of producing serious scholarship.”
The complaint’s allegations stand to be controversial for its challenging a system that purports to redress the legacy of anti-Black discrimination and sexism and for seeking to apply civil rights laws to white men, a demographic that is described by leading progressives as “privileged.” However, non-white students, both male and female, have complained about the discriminatory effects of racial preferences, which has in practice punished intellectual achievement in pursuit of “social justice” and was even outlawed in California, a state where whites are a minority, decades before it was ruled unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.
“Northwestern Pritzker School of Law is among the top law schools in the country, and we are proud of their outstanding faculty,” Northwestern University said on Wednesday, as reported by ABC News, in a statement responding to the lawsuit. “We intend to vigorously defend this case.”
On Friday, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, founder of higher education antisemitism watchdog AMCHA Initiative, told The Algemeiner that, in addition to undermining civil rights, racial preferences have fostered antisemitism on college campuses. Admissions and hiring committees packed with progressives ideologues, she said, not only prefer non-white candidates, they also aim to ensure that new hires are ideologically progressive — and, moreover, anti-Zionist. The effect of this, she explained, is that Jews in higher education, whom mainstream progressive ideology classifies as white, are also subject to discrimination, an issue The Algemeiner has covered extensively.
“Racial preferences pit racial identity against the meritocracy, and one of the reasons that Jews have became so prominent in academia is because it is a system that rewards talent, character, and grit. Jews tend to be well-educated and highly achieving, and when an institution’s primary concern is the quality of the individual as opposed to the color of his or her skin or perceived background, Jews excel,” Rossman-Benjamin explained. “What the university stands for, academic integrity and excellence, are values that have lifted Jews up in America, and, in addition to being critical for advancing humanity, they have been one of the most important sources of our strength in this country.”
She continued, “However, when you impose academia criteria that have nothing to do with those values and nothing to do with academic integrity but everything to do with a political agenda that really at its core is discriminatory and hateful — and antisemitic — you make the university not just a hostile place for Jews but also a hostile place for learning.”
Rossman-Benjamin further argued that progressives have effortlessly “captured” higher education institutions over the past several decades and that their predominance in academia and the explosion of antisemitism on campuses across the US are directly linked.
“What’s so interesting is that the way you know that contemporary progress is not just a fraudulent and bankrupt ideology but an evil one, is that it produces antisemitism,” she continued. “Antisemitism is a bellwether of its malevolence. If it were positive and healthy, it would lift people up — but it isn’t. In fact, it is hurting them in the deepest ways.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Explosive Lawsuit Accuses Northwestern University of Reverse Racism in Hiring first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Former Columbia University President Appointed as UK Economic Adviser

Columbia University administrators and faculty, led by President Minouche Shafik, testified before the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce on April 17, 2024. Photo: Jack Gruber/Reuters Connect
i24 News – British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has named Minouche Shafik, former president of Columbia University, as his chief economic adviser at Downing Street, a move aimed at stabilizing the country’s fragile economy and averting a potential budget crisis.
Shafik, an economist of Egyptian origin with dual British and American nationality, has held senior roles at the Bank of England, the IMF, and the World Bank.
She later led the London School of Economics and was elevated to the House of Lords in 2020.
Her tenure in the United States was more turbulent. Shafik stepped down as president of Columbia University in 2024 after just a year in office, amid fierce criticism over her handling of pro-Palestinian protests following the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, and the subsequent war in Gaza.
US officials accused her of failing to confront antisemitism on campus, while students and faculty condemned her decision to call in police to dismantle protest encampments.
Since returning to Britain, Shafik has played an active role in policy and cultural institutions. She advised Foreign Secretary David Lammy on international aid reform, has chaired the Victoria & Albert Museum since January, and led the “Economy 2030” inquiry for the Resolution Foundation, where she argued for reforms to the UK’s system of wealth taxation.
RSS
Israel Mulls West Bank Annexation in Response to Moves to Recognize Palestine

The Jordan Valley. Photo: Юкатан via Wikimedia Commons.
Israel is considering annexation in the West Bank as a possible response to France and other countries recognizing a Palestinian state, according to three Israeli officials and the idea will be discussed further on Sunday, another official said.
Extension of Israeli sovereignty to the West Bank – de facto annexation of land captured in the 1967 Middle East war – was on the agenda for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet meeting late on Sunday that is expected to focus on the Gaza war, a member of the small circle of ministers said.
It is unclear where precisely any such measure would be applied and when, whether only in Israeli settlements or some of them, or in specific areas of the West Bank like the Jordan Valley and whether any concrete steps, which would likely entail a lengthy legislative process, would follow discussions.
Any step toward annexation in the West Bank would likely draw widespread condemnation from the Palestinians, who seek the territory for a future state, as well as Arab and Western countries. It is unclear where US President Donald Trump stands on the matter. The White House and State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A spokesperson for Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar did not respond to a request for comment on whether Saar had discussed the move with his US counterpart Marco Rubio during his visit to Washington last week.
Netanyahu’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether the prime minister supports annexation and if so, where.
A past pledge by Netanyahu to annex Jewish settlements and the Jordan Valley was scrapped in 2020 in favor of normalizing ties with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in the Abraham Accords brokered by Trump in his first term in office.
The office of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The United States said on Friday it would not allow Abbas to travel to New York for the United Nations gathering of world leaders, where several US allies are set to recognize Palestine as a state.
RSS
Israel Pounds Gaza City Suburbs, Netanyahu to Convene Security Cabinet

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to the press on Capitol Hill, Washington, DC, July 8, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Israeli forces pounded the suburbs of Gaza City overnight from the air and ground, destroying homes and driving more families out of the area as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet was set on Sunday to discuss a plan to seize the city.
Residents of Sheikh Radwan, one of the largest neighborhoods of Gaza City, said the territory had been under Israeli tank shelling and airstrikes throughout Saturday and on Sunday, forcing families to seek shelter in the western parts of the city.
The Israeli military has gradually escalated its operations around Gaza City over the past three weeks, and on Friday it ended temporary pauses in the area that had allowed for aid deliveries, designating it a “dangerous combat zone.”
“They are crawling into the heart of the city where hundreds of thousands are sheltering, from the east, north, and south, while bombing those areas from the air and ground to scare people to leave,” said Rezik Salah, a father of two, from Sheikh Radwan.
An Israeli official said Netanyahu’s security cabinet will convene on Sunday evening to discuss the next stages of the planned offensive to seize Gaza City, which he has described as Hamas’ last bastion.
A full-scale offensive is not expected to start for weeks. Israel says it wants to evacuate the civilian population before moving more ground forces in.
HAMAS SPOKESPERSON TARGETED
Netanyahu confirmed on Sunday that Israeli forces had targeted Abu Ubaida, the spokesperson of Hamas’ armed wing. Defense Minister Israel Katz said that Abu Ubaida was killed. Two Hamas officials contacted by Reuters did not respond to requests for comment.
Gaza health authorities said 15 people, including five children, were killed in the attack on a residential building in the heart of Gaza City.
Abu Ubaida, also known as Hozayfa Al-Khalout, is a well-known figure to Palestinians and Israelis alike, close to Hamas’ top military leaders and in charge of delivering the group’s messages, often via video, for around two decades, delivering statements while wearing a red keffiyeh that concealed his face.
The US targeted him with sanctions in April 2024, accusing him of leading the “cyber influence department” of al-Qassam Brigades.
In his last statement on Friday, he warned that the planned Israeli offensive on Gaza City would endanger the hostages.
On Saturday, Red Cross head Mirjana Spoljaric said an evacuation from the city would provoke a massive population displacement that no other area in the enclave is equipped to absorb, with shortages of food, shelter and medical supplies.
“People who have relatives in the south left to stay with them. Others, including myself, didn’t find a space as Deir Al-Balah and Mawasi are overcrowded,” said Ghada, a mother of five from the city’s Sabra neighborhood.
Around half of the enclave’s more than 2 million people are presently in Gaza City. Several thousand were estimated to have left the city for central and southern areas of the enclave.
Israel’s military has warned its political leaders that the offensive is endangering hostages still being held by Hamas in Gaza. Protests in Israel calling for an end to the war and the release of the hostages have intensified in the past few weeks.