(KRON) — A professor who was booted from Stanford University after freshman students complained about his lecture on the Israel-Palestinian conflict filed a defamation and retaliation lawsuit in federal court.
Dr. Ameer Loggins’ attorney filed the suit Wednesday against the prestigious university, a student, and a fellow professor who labeled him as one of the two “most racist faculty members” on Stanford’s campus.
Loggins was terminated over a classroom lecture he gave on October 10, 2023. Three days earlier in Israel, Hamas gunmen stormed across Gaza’s border, ambushed a music festival, and killed about 1,200 people.
The class, “College 101,” was for freshmen new at the university. Loggins engaged his class in a discussion about settler colonialism and talked about Native Americans. As part of this discussion, he also sparked a “difficult dialogue about dehumanization, Israel and Gaza.”
After the lecture, students complained to Stanford officials.
Their professor was suspended on October 11 while officials investigated whether his lectures utilized identity-based targeting. According to Stanford University President Richard Saller and Provost Jenny Martinez, Dr. Loggins “addressed the Middle East conflict in a manner that called out individual students in class based on their background and identities.”
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Loggins had been suspended since the incident and recently learned that his contract, which expired April 1, was not renewed.
According to the lawsuit, Stanford violated its own personnel policy by issuing a public statement about Loggins’ suspension following pressure from students.
At the time, tensions were high on many college campuses over the War in Gaza, anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia. The professor claims he endured a wave of harassment, including threats of violence and doxing online.
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“Academic freedom does not permit the identity-based targeting of students,” university officials wrote in a statement. Students said the instructor tried to justify Hamas’ actions and asserted Israel is a colonizer, Rabbi Dov Greenberg told CNN.
Attorney Derek Sells of The Cochran Firm is representing the professor.
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