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George Washington University Professor Accused of Antisemitism Leaves School, Heads to Qatar-Based Institute
Professor Lara Sheehi of the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. Photo: X/Twitter.
George Washington University psychology professor Lara Sheehi, who was accused of verbally abusing and discriminating against her Jewish graduate students, has left the school and accepted a job at an institution based in Qatar, according to a correspondence obtained by The Algemeiner.
“I am writing to let you know that I have been offered a job at another university and I have made the difficult decision not to return to GW at the end of this year,” Sheehi wrote in an email sent to members of the university’s Professional Psychology Program. “As you can imagine, while this is an aligned professional and personal choice, I have mixed emotions, especially as GW has been my professional home since I was a graduate student.”
Sheehi added that she will “miss” her students, without mentioning that she was accused of mistreating several based on their ethnic and religious background. She is now employed as an assistant professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, a school based in the capital of Qatar, which hosts leaders of Hamas and, together with Iran and Turkey, has provided a significant portion of the Palestinian terrorist group’s budget.
Since Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, Sheehi has shared posts on social media describing Hamas terrorists as “martyrs” and endorsing their “armed resistance.” However, the academic was embroiled in controversy long before the current Israel-Hamas and surge in antisemitism on US college campuses.
In Jan. 2023, StandWithUs, an educational nonprofit, filed a civil rights complaint alleging that Sheehi, who taught a mandatory diversity course, invited an antisemitic speaker to address her class, launched a smear campaign against Jewish students, and later filed disciplinary charges against them in retaliation for their accusing her of antisemitism.
According to the complaint, Sheehi expressed contempt for Jews on the first day of class, when, in Aug. 2022, she asked every student to share information about their backgrounds and cultures. Replying to a student who revealed that she was Israeli, Sheehi said, “It’s not your fault you were born in Israel.” The students claimed they made several attempts to persuade the university to correct Sheehi’s behavior or arrange an alternative option for fulfilling the requirements of her course. Each time, StandWithUs alleged, administrators said nothing could be done.
Later, the complaint added, Sheehi spread rumors that the students were “combative” racists, and filed misconduct charges against them. One student told The Algemeiner at the time that she never learned what university policies Sheehi accused her and her classmates of violating.
“She turned the faculty against the Jewish students by spreading lies about us and our conduct, she disparaged us in front of our classmates, calling us Islamophobes,” said the student, who elected to speak anonymously for fear of additional retaliation. “She smeared our name in a community where success as a therapist really depends on relationships with our faculty supervisors and our colleagues. The disciplinary proceedings effectively silenced us, making it clear that you can’t be a Jew and you can’t speak up about antisemitism safely in this program.”
In response to a request for comment for this story, George Washington University just said it can confirm that Sheehi is no longer at the university, without addressing the accusations against her.
The allegations sent a seismic shock across the academic community, and a month after they became public over 500 academics and mental health professionals issued a letter urging the university to relieve Sheehi of her teaching duties.
Sheehi adamantly denied the students’ allegations, arguing in an essay published in CounterPunch on Feb. 3 that she was “targeted specifically because I am an Arab woman whose scholarship and activism advocates for Palestinians and, in the process, critiques Israeli settler-colonial apartheid.” Leehi also accused George Washington University of lacking “moral fibre” and having “colluded” with StandWithUs because it opened a third-party investigation into the students’ claims. She added that analyzing her X/Twitter account for evidence of her alleged antisemitism was ““civilizational and sexist discourse,” drawing from language that is popular among extreme left-wing academics.
That April, the US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) opened an investigation into George Washington University to determine whether administrators refused to stop Sheehi’s alleged conduct. Weeks earlier, the school said there was no evidence to substantiate her students’ claims, citing an independent investigation it paid Crowell & Morning, a law firm based in Washington, DC, to conduct.
The government’s investigation into the university’s role in the events that took place during Sheehi’s tenure at the school is ongoing.
The Doha Institute for Graduate Studies did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post George Washington University Professor Accused of Antisemitism Leaves School, Heads to Qatar-Based Institute first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Incoming US Senate Majority Leader Threatens ICC With Sanctions Over Arrest Warrant for Netanyahu
An exterior view of the International Criminal Court in the Hague, Netherlands, March 31, 2021. Photo: REUTERS/Piroschka van de Wouw
Incoming US Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has threatened to push legislation imposing sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) if it does not halt its efforts to pursue arrest warrants against Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Thune, who was picked last week to be the next Senate majority leader once the Republicans take control of the legislative chamber in January, wrote Sunday on X/Twitter that he will make it a “top priority” to punish the ICC if it refuses to walk back its arrest warrant application issued against Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The US lawmaker also indicated he would take action if Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the current Senate majority leader, does not do so against the intergovernmental organization.
“If the ICC and its prosecutor do not reverse their outrageous and unlawful actions to pursue arrest warrants against Israeli officials, the Senate should immediately pass sanctions legislation, as the House has already done on a bipartisan basis,” he wrote. “If Majority Leader Schumer does not act, the Senate Republican majority will stand with our key ally Israel and make this — and other supportive legislation ‚ a top priority in the next Congress.”
In May, the ICC chief prosecutor officially requested arrest warrants for the Israeli premier, Gallant, and three Hamas terrorist leaders — Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Al-Masri, and Ismail Haniyeh — accusing all five men of “bearing criminal responsibility” for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Israel or the Gaza Strip. The three Hamas leaders have since been killed, and Gallant was recently fired as Israel’s defense minister.
US and Israeli officials subsequently issued blistering condemnations of the ICC move, decrying the court for drawing a moral equivalence between Israel’s democratically elected leaders and the heads of Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that launched the ongoing war in Gaza with its massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7.
ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan has come under fire for making his surprise demand for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant on the same day in May that he suddenly canceled a long-planned visit to both Gaza and Israel to collect evidence of alleged war crimes. The last-second cancellation infuriated US and British leaders, according to Reuters, which reported that the trip would have offered Israeli leaders a first opportunity to present their position and outline any action they were taking to respond to the war crime allegations.
Thune’s Republican colleagues praised his threat to the ICC, suggesting that the Senate should target the international organization.
“Well done Senator Thune. The ICC’s actions against Israel have been outrageous, and an independent review into the prosecutor’s actions is more than called for,” wrote Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). :The Senate should take up the ICC sanctions bill that passed the House in a bipartisan manner. Standing up for Israel today protects America tomorrow.”
“The Senate must immediately pass legislation to sanction the International Criminal Court,” stated Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY.), chair of the Senate Republican Conference. “Senate Republicans stands with Israel.”
“The Senate Foreign Relations Committee can and should act ASAP to pass ICC sanctions legislation. We waited for months for the majority to schedule the vote only to have them postpone it before the election. We will not fail to act when Republicans are in the majority,” wrote Sen. John Risch (R-ID), the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) wrote that the Senate “should immediately consider the bipartisan legislation passed by the House to sanction the ICC.”
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) added that Thune is “right” and that “Chuck Schumer should do his job” by advancing legislation to sanction the ICC.
The US has said it does not recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction and rejects the implied equivalence drawn between Israel and Hamas.
The post Incoming US Senate Majority Leader Threatens ICC With Sanctions Over Arrest Warrant for Netanyahu first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Concordia closes its Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, citing ‘budgetary constraints’
It was announced quietly, wit a small, two-paragraph notice replacing the web page for Concordia University’s Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (MIGS), along with an unrelated stock […]
The post Concordia closes its Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, citing ‘budgetary constraints’ appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Jamaal Bowman Continues Diatribes Against Israel, AIPAC; Expresses Pride in Not Condemning Oct. 7 Massacre
US Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) speaks during the National Action Network National Convention in New York City, US, April 7, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
In his final weeks as a US federal lawmaker, Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) has continued his persistent condemnation of Israel, accusing the Jewish state of perpetrating “apartheid” against Palestinians, expressing pride in not supporting a resolution condemning Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, and arguing against the funding of Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system.
During a newly released interview with left-wing pundit Rania Khalek, Bowman reflected on his unsuccessful reelection bid earlier this year. The lawmaker blamed the “pro-Israel lobby” for his loss in the Democratic primary, claiming that his outspokenness about the ongoing Israel-Hamas war made him a target for “Zionists.”
Bowman, one of the staunchest critics of Israel in the US Congress, argued that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a prominent pro-Israel lobbying group, overwhelmed his campaign by spending roughly $15 million to aid his opponent, Westchester County Executive George Latimer. He added that his constituents were stunned that a “special interest” group such as AIPAC “can remove a congressman” by submerging a primary race in a torrent of money.
“Now the world has seen AIPAC for who they are,” Bowman stated.
The stated mission of AIPAC is to seek bipartisan support to strengthen the US-Israel relationship.
Bowman admitted that he did not know much about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when he initially ran for office, opting to parrot talking points such as Israel “has a right to exist” and a “right to defend itself.”
Bowman said that his opinion on Israel was transformed after he visited the country on a trip sponsored by J Street, a progressive Zionist organization that recently called for the US to impose an arms embargo against the Jewish state. The left-wing firebrand said that the trip — which consisted of a series of discussions with peace activists, scholars, and former Israel Defense Force (IDF) officers — soured his view of the Jewish state, comparing the security checkpoints and barrier wall that separate Israel and the West Bank to protect against terrorism with the Jim Crow laws in the US south segregating black Americans.
Khalek asked Bomwan if his view on Iron Dome has shifted, citing that the missile interception system “shields Israel from the consequences for bombing all of its neighbors, for constantly stealing land.”
The congressman claimed that his view on Israel’s air defense system has changed, arguing that it represents “a weapon to use and continue apartheid, oppression, open-air prison, occupation, and now the genocide” of Palestinians. He said that he regrets voting in favor of Iron Dome funding, and that the missile defense system should only be replenished if the Palestinians are given a fully-funded army on Israel’s borders.
Bowman also criticized a congressional resolution condemning the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, suggesting that AIPAC authored the document. He dismissed the notion that the mass murder, rape, and kidnapping of Israelis on Oct. 7 was “unprovoked,” claiming that Israel initiated the aggression by enacting “apartheid” on Palestinians. He then lambasted American governors, senators, and President Joe Biden for immediately showing empathy to Israelis, saying that legislators were being “dishonest” and not having a “full conversation” about the Jewish state.
In the year following the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, Bowman intensified his rhetoric against Israel and pro-Israel organizations. Over the summer, he condemned AIPAC as a “Zionist regime.” In a desperate attempt to salvage his ill-fated primary effort, he promise the Democratic Socialists of America — a prominent far-left organization that has made anti-Israel activism a top priority — that he would vote against future Iron Dome funding in exchange for financial backing of his campaign. Bowman infamously dismissed the widely reported and corroborated allegations of Hamas terrorists raping Israeli women during the Oct. 7 onslaught as “propaganda” before being forced to walk back his remarks.
In June, Latimer cruised to a commanding victory over Bowman, winning by a margin of 58 percent to 41 percent.
The post Jamaal Bowman Continues Diatribes Against Israel, AIPAC; Expresses Pride in Not Condemning Oct. 7 Massacre first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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