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Judge Tosses Challenge to Lawsuit Alleging Mistreatment of Jewish Professor at California College
California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Photo: Edward H. Blake via Wikimedia Commons
A judge has denied a motion from the California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco to dismiss a lawsuit filed by a professor who alleges that she was disciplined and humiliated for disagreeing with students about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
As The Algemeiner has previously reported, professor Karen Fiss engaged in a brief conversation with anti-Zionist students who, due to being told a historical fact they preferred not to hear, filed a complaint against her with CCA’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) office which alleged that she had engaged in “harassing and discriminatory” behavior. Her legal counsel, provided by the nonprofit Jewish civil rights organization the Deborah Project, maintain that Fiss merely challenged the students’ anti-Zionist notions and apprised them of a 1991 incident in which Kuwait expelled nearly 300,000 Palestinians from its borders.
The college ultimately found Fiss guilty of the charges lodged against her, ruling that she had imposed her “power” on the students, who are women of color, and betrayed her cultural insensitivity by citing Kuwait’s expulsion of Palestinians in their conversation. The college further alleged that Fiss had used her “positional power as a professor to get the outcome [she] sought, which was for the students to agree with her point of view.” The college reached those findings but had previously declined to apply the same logic to an earlier complaint Fiss had filed about the Critical Ethnic Studies program’s issuing a statement — “DECOLONIZATION IS NOT A DINNER PARTY,” it said — which justified Hamas’s violence and implied that Jews are not indigenous to their own homeland.
That is because, the Deborah Project argues, CCA’s rules are in place to protect left-wing anti-Zionism and punish Jews who oppose it.
“According to CAA, academic freedom is an impenetrable bar to complaints about celebrating the slaughter and raping to death of Jews, but is made of Swiss cheese when a fully-tenured professor — Dr. Karen Fiss — explains to students some truths about the Middle East,” Lori Lowenthal Marcus, legal director of the Deborah Project, said in a statement included in a press release on Wednesday.
With her reputation blighted by scandal and the college threatening to revoke her tenure, Fiss resolved to fight for both her right to exist as a proud Jew at work and her right to free speech. She sued CAA for discriminating against her for being Jewish, a violation of Titles VI and VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and breach of contract, offenses which caused her “substantial damages” and other trauma.
Deploying the weapons contained in its legal arsenal, the college attempted to muzzle Fiss even in court by filing a motion to dismiss her case entirely, and later, to strike from her own complaint the most damaging allegations regarding the university’s alleged conduct — including that the college enforces a double-standard free speech code which protects anti-Zionists “who publicly call for the murder of Jews in Israel.”
However, Judge Haywood William of the US District Court for the Northern District of California has now struck down the college’s challenge to the case, clearing the way for it to enter discovery, during which her attorneys will amass additional evidence in support of Fiss’s allegations.
In Wednesday’s press release, Fiss’s legal counsel praised the decision.
“The Deborah Project looks forward to the state of litigation that follows denials of motions to dismiss, which is called the discovery phase,” it said. “We will learn how a leading California arts college lost its way and instead of focusing on art, became most focused on ‘Critical Ethnic Studies’ — which is the largest department in this ‘art’ school. Critical Ethnic Studies, inter alia, demonizes Jews, which are cast oppressors, and the Jewish State, which is described as a colonizing, ethnic cleansing, genocidal, and illicit country.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Judge Tosses Challenge to Lawsuit Alleging Mistreatment of Jewish Professor at California College first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Palestine Action Wins Bid to Challenge UK Ban Under Anti-Terrorism Laws
Police officers block a street as pro-Palestinian demonstrators gather in protest against Britain’s Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s plans to proscribe the “Palestine Action” group in the coming weeks, in London, Britain, June 23, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Jaimi Joy
The co-founder of an anti-Israel campaign group on Wednesday won her bid to bring a legal challenge against the British government’s decision to ban the group under anti–terrorism laws.
Huda Ammori, who helped found Palestine Action in 2020, asked London’s High Court to give the go-ahead for a full challenge to the group’s proscription, which was made on the grounds it committed or participated in acts of terrorism.
Palestine Action has increasingly targeted Israel-linked companies in Britain, often spraying red paint, blocking entrances or damaging equipment. It accuses Britain’s government of complicity in what it says are Israeli war crimes in Gaza.
Earlier this month, the High Court refused Ammori’s application to pause the ban and, following an unsuccessful last-ditch appeal, Palestine Action‘s proscription came into effect just after midnight on July 5.
Proscription makes it a crime to be a member of the group, carrying a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison.
Judge Martin Chamberlain granted permission for Ammori to bring a judicial review, saying her case that proscription amounted to a disproportionate interference with her and others’ right to freedom of expression was “reasonably arguable.”
Dozens of people have been arrested for holding placards purportedly supporting the group since the ban, and Ammori’s lawyers say people expressing support for the Palestinian cause have also been subject to increased scrutiny from police.
However, Britain’s interior minister Yvette Cooper has said violence and criminal damage have no place in legitimate protest and that Palestine Action‘s activities – including breaking into a military base and damaging two planes – justify proscription.
Israel has repeatedly denied committing abuses in its war in Gaza, which began after Palestinian terrorist group Hamas attacked Israel from Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023.
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Jews, Israelis Targeted in Austria Amid Surge in Antisemitic Incidents; Local Jewish Community Calls for Action
Illustrative: Pro-Palestinian protesters shout slogans and hold flags during a demonstration against Israel’s military action in the Gaza strip, in Vienna, July 20, 2014. Photo: REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger
Austria is facing a sharp rise in antisemitic incidents and anti-Israel rhetoric, prompting outrage from the country’s Jewish community and urgent calls for authorities to take swift action against growing anti-Jewish hatred.
On Saturday, a group of pro-Palestinian activists burst into the opening of the Salzburg Festival — one of the world’s premier events for opera, music, and drama — waving Palestinian flags and shouting antisemitic slogans.
As Austrian Vice-Chancellor Andreas Babler began his opening speech at the event, six individuals stormed the stage, aggressively waving Palestinian flags and shouting “Blood on your hands!” along with other antisemitic slurs.
The Salzburg Festival.
A frenzied white Austrian on stage, screaming in German about those bloody J*ws.
I’m sure we’ve seen that before… pic.twitter.com/b6oNyTwZRT
— Joo
(@JoosyJew) July 28, 2025
The incident raised alarming questions about the event’s security, as the six protesters gained easy access while wearing fake, misspelled staff IDs with fictitious names, revealing a clear failure in background checks.
According to festival director Lukas Crepaz, security measures and control checks have been significantly strengthened. The six activists were arrested, and authorities continue to investigate the incident.
Elie Rosen, president of the Jewish Community (IKG) of Salzburg, Styria, and Carinthia, condemned the incident, calling the disruption of the Salzburg Festival’s opening a “targeted political provocation, carried by openly anti-Israel rhetoric.”
“Jewish life in Austria must not become the collateral damage of political agitation,” Rosen said in a statement. “We often hear powerful statements at commemorative events condemning antisemitism.”
“But where are Israel’s outspoken supporters when real solidarity is needed? Antisemitism takes many forms and frequently starts with the silence of the majority,” she continued. “Hatred toward Israel is not a legitimate form of protest.”
In a separate incident last week, an Israeli couple was denied access to a campsite in Ehrwald, a village in western Austria, after attempting to make a reservation to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary.
According to local media, the couple attempted to register at the campsite, but after revealing their Israeli passports, they were denied entry and asked to leave, forcing them to find alternative accommodations.
“We have no place for Jews here,” the campsite operator reportedly told them.
When asked for comment, the campsite operators told the German newspaper Jüdische Allgemeine, “These people should much rather take care of the many children in Gaza. Otherwise, there is nothing to say.”
In another incident last week, a group of well-known Israeli classical musicians reported being refused service at a pizzeria in Vienna after staff overheard them speaking Hebrew.
One of the musicians recounted that while they were ordering their food, the waiter asked them which language they were speaking. When they replied Hebrew, the waiter allegedly told them, “In that case, leave. I’m not serving you food.”
“The initial shock and humiliation were profound. But what struck us even more deeply was what came next – or rather what didn’t. The people around us were clearly startled, some offered sympathetic glances … and then, quietly, they went back to their dinners, their conversations, their wine – as though nothing had happened,” one of the musicians wrote in a post on X.
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‘All of Our Strength’: Over 1,000 Pro-Israel Activists Gather in DC for Solidarity Conference
2025 Israel on Campus Coalition National Leadership Summit. Photo: ICC.
Over 1,000 Jewish students, faculty, and activists amassed in Washington, DC on July 27-29 to attend the Israel on Campus Coalition’s annual National Leadership Summit (NLS), an electric event which achieved creating the atmosphere of both a festival of Jewish elation and an academic conference.
Founded in 2002, the Israel on Campus Coalition (ICC) is a nonprofit organization that describes its mission as inspiring college students to defend and hold pride in the state of Israel. One of its major initiatives is the “microgrants” program, which helps pro-Israel campus groups organize events about Israeli culture and society. Another, the ICC Community Impact Fellowship, awards college students a $1,000 stipend for completing a leadership seminar in which they are trained in civic engagement, coalition building, and rapidly responding to antisemitic and anti-Israel events on their campuses.
Demand for a spot at this year’s 2025 conference exceeded the nonprofit’s capacity to host the thousands of students who signed up to be a conferee at what is recognized as the largest gathering of pro-Israel students in the country. Hundreds were waitlisted and encouraged to reapply next year. Those whom ICC did select were flown out to DC and billeted at the Capital Hilton, all expenses paid. They were joined – for the first time ever – by a delegation of faculty from the Academic Engagement Network (AEN) and staff from most major Jewish organization in the US, from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to StandWithUs (SWU).
“We just ultimately believe that we’re better when we use all of our strength as a movement,” ICC chief executive Jacob Baime told The Algemeiner on Monday during an interview. “And we’re not the only ones who feel that way. The other side does as well, having mounted a highly professionalized coalition, well-funded, well-coordinated effort with many groups involved. We need our partners and the different perspectives they hold too.”
When The Algemeiner last attended NLS, the world was not yet one year removed from Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, the deadliest day in modern Jewish history since the Holocaust. Jewish students and ICC staff, many of whom have family members and friends who were affected by the atrocities or were later drafted into the war it precipitated, were still laboring to comprehend what had become a new and unprecedented world – one in which classic antisemitic tropes had resurfaced to corrupt public debate, anti-Jewish violence occurred daily across the world, and anti-Zionist groups were taking over college campuses and converting them into outposts of antisemitic hate.
As such the event aimed to inspire Jewish students “take back the campus,” an effort advanced by an infantry of social media influencers.
This year’s NLS leaned more heavily into supplying students with information, facts, and statistics curated and presented by the most accomplished Middle East scholars, government leaders, and nonprofit executives in the global pro-Israel community. Social media influencers and celebrities took the stage as well, showcasing their strengths as spirited advocates who remind students why the issues under discussion relate to their contemporary experiences as young people and consumers.
Speakers included Alyza Lewin, president of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law; Col. Miri Eisin of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Jonathan Schanzer, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies; Ilya Shapiro, senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute; Miriam Elman of the Academic Engagement Network; and Dr. Ayal Feinberg, director of the Center for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights. On offer as giveaways were Douglas Murray’s recently published polemic On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization and Dina Powell McCormick and David McCormick’s co-authored book, titled Who Believed in You?: How Purposeful Mentorship Changes the World.
“We wanted students to engage with ideas that touch on the entirety of the campus ecosystem and the subjects they may be asked to comment on,” Baime explained to The Algemeiner. “Oct. 7, the war, and its aftermath have changed the American pro-Israel movement forever.”
The obverse side of the conference’s educational objectives was wholesome fun for the 800 college aged conferees in attendance. They were treated to a buoyant concert in the Hilton’s Presidential Ballroom featuring the jazz-pop fusion act “All of the Above” and the rapper Duvbear, an 18-year-old who is emblematic of what Generation-Z calls “rizz.” Celebrities such as former NBA player Meta World Peace, former NFL linebacker Emmanuel Acho, and professional boxer George Foreman III afforded the students quick meet and greets and selfies. Capital Hilton staff carted out pounds of food – Latin, Asian, and Kosher – from its kitchens every several hours, fostering opportunities for socializing and being photographed on an ICC-themed “red carpet.”
University of California, Davis rising junior Toby Jacob told The Algemeiner that the nonprofit’s strength is its staff.
“The staff here is so knowledgeable and so capable,” Jacob said. “It can feel really scary when you’re dealing with these like large scale issues in your student government, with your administration – and to have people who have the resources to walk you through it is vital.”
Tessa Veksler, an NLS 2025 moderator who became the most recognizable pro-Israel activist of Generation-Z after being elected the first Shabbat-observant president of the University of California, Santa Barbara’s student government, agreed.
“When I was on campus going through the worst of the worst, I knew that ICC had my back and that I could count on the staff and the organization to be there at a moment’s notice,” Veksler said. “They exceptionally equip students with the tools to be able to lead themselves, and so there is an expectation that if you are an ICC fellow that you take the tools ICC gives and put in the work to go and become involved in student government and be the person to make the impact.”
She continued, “It’s a remarkable thing, and there’s a reason why I have stayed as involved as I am.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.