JNS
The lawsuit reflects “a broader pattern across top universities where Israeli and Jewish professors and academics have been discriminated against,” Rebecca Harris, of the Brandeis Center, told JNS.
The University of California, Berkeley, is facing a lawsuit alleging it violated state antidiscrimination laws when it rejected an Israeli professor’s teaching application because of her nationality.
The suit was filed on Wednesday in California Superior Court by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and the law firm of Olivier and Schreiber PC on behalf of Yael Nativ, an Israeli dance researcher and sociologist who served as a visiting professor at the school in 2022.
After a successful semester teaching a course on intersectional perspectives on contemporary dance in Israel, Nativ was invited by professors of the school’s Jewish law and Israel studies center to apply as a visiting professor in the department of theater, dance and performance studies for the 2024-2025 academic year, which she did in August 2023, according to the complaint.
Following the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on October, 7, 2023, department chair SanSan Kwan told Nativ through a direct message on WhatsApp in November 2023 that her application would not be accepted as “things are very hot here right now, and many of our grad students are angry. I would be putting the department and you in a terrible position if you taught here,” the lawsuit stated.
“It’s a plainly illegal act of discrimination,” Rebecca Harris, a litigation attorney for the Brandeis Center, told JNS.
Harris said this lawsuit reflects “a broader pattern across top universities where Israeli and Jewish professors and academics have been discriminated against and excluded on that basis.”
According to the complaint, Nativ responded to Kwan’s message, stating that she was “so sad and broken all around, for everyone in all sides. Yet the biggest disappointment and pain come from my/our academic scholars and colleagues, mostly in American universities.”
“The level of ignorance, hate and the inability to make an effort for a complex discourse is astounding and appalling,” she added.
Kwan did not reply further, per the lawsuit.
Dan Mogulof, assistant vice chancellor in the Berkeley communications office, told JNS that the university does not discuss “personnel matters” and has not yet seen the Brandeis Center’s lawsuit.
He added that Berkeley “will not comment on an individual case, but UC Berkeley is committed to confronting harassment and discrimination of all types, and to gaining compliance with all relevant state and federal statutes, and university policies.”
“When those laws and/or policies are violated, the university believes there should be appropriate consequences,” he told JNS.
Berkeley opened an investigation into the alleged discrimination in February 2024 after Haaretz published an op-ed authored by Nativ on Dec. 31, 2023, in which she criticized the university’s decision not to hire her because she is Israeli, according to the complaint.
While Berkeley determined that “Nativ’s claim that she was discriminated against based on her national origin was substantiated by a preponderance of the evidence,” the university has not notified Nativ of any plans to remedy its actions in the 11 months since its finding, the Brandeis Center stated.
Nativ “followed the normal university processes. She was hoping that the university would remedy this issue themselves,” Harris told JNS, adding that the professor’s request for remediation is “eminently reasonable.”
“All she’s really wanted is an apology, an invitation to return and recognition of the issue and some kind of remediation to make sure this doesn’t happen to other people,” she said.
The Brandeis Center filed the lawsuit in a California state court rather than a federal court because the state has “robust employment antidiscrimination laws that very explicitly prohibit exactly this type of national origin discrimination in employment, including hiring,” according to Harris.
“Nativ is looking for the quickest possible resolution of this issue,” Harris told JNS.
