A professor at Georgia State University has resigned as director of its Middle East Institute and filed a federal discrimination complaint because, she alleges, the university failed to adequately deal with incidents of anti-Muslim bias and retaliated against her and a student for pressing it to act.
Dona J. Stewart, a professor of geosciences, and her lawyer announced in a news release issued today that she had left her post as the institute’s director to protest the university’s handling of her discrimination complaint and retaliatory actions that have “impaired her ability to fulfill federal grant commitments and harmed her career.”
A spokeswoman for Georgia State, Andrea Jones, issued a statement today saying the university treats complaints of discrimination “very seriously” and took appropriate action last year in response to Ms. Stewart’s discrimination complaint. “Due to federal privacy guidelines, the university cannot address the details of the complaint and its resolution,” the statement says. But, it says, “in no way” were retaliatory actions taken against the student or Ms. Stewart, who, it notes, had recently been promoted from associate professor to full professor.
Both Ms. Stewart’s news release and her complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, filed in January, allege that she came into conflict with the university’s administration last year, after alleging discrimination on behalf of a Muslim-American doctoral student who had been repeatedly asked by another faculty member whether she was “carrying any bombs” under her head scarf.
When Ms. Stewart and the student pressed administrators to deal with the incidents, the dean’s office at the college of arts and science demanded that Ms. Stewart remove the student from a visiting-instructor position at the Middle East Institute, canceled the student’s registration for her doctoral courses, and declared the student ineligible to lead a study-abroad program in Egypt that had already been approved, the EEOC complaint alleges.
Administrators subsequently withdrew their support for Ms. Stewart’s plan to use a federal grant to establish a bachelor-of-arts program in Middle Eastern studies, and otherwise undermined her and her institute, the complaint alleges.
Ms. Stewart remains a member of the university’s faculty, but has taken unpaid leave for the coming year. The university’s statement says it is “fully cooperating with the EEOC on this investigation and looks forward to resolving this matter.”
