Court Dismisses Lawsuit Over Non-Renewal of Stanford Lecturer Who Conducted "Exercise" on Oct. 10 Allegedly Targeting Jewish Student

Here are plaintiff's factual allegations, as reported in Monday's decision by Judge Jacquelyn Scott Corley (N.D. Cal.). in Loggins v. Leland Stanford Jr. Univ.:

Dr. [Ameer Hasan] Loggins is a "black, African American, Muslim male[.]" He earned his doctorate degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 2019. Stanford hired him as a lecturer in August 2023.

On October 10, 2023, Dr. Loggins led two Stanford class discussions on settler colonialism and sought "to have a difficult dialogue" about "dehumanization, Israel, and Palestine." He "wanted the focus to be on the Palestinian civilians. [Dr. Loggins] also wanted to complicate the ways in which many frame the Israel and Palestine 'conflict,' which is through the frame of Jewish people vs. Muslim people." So, Dr. Loggins "asked whether any Jewish students were present in the classroom, in an effort to speak to the diversity within the Jewish diaspora and to demonstrate to the students that the Jewish diaspora is not one with a monolithic politic."

Dr. Loggins then led an "exercise to create a scene within a scripted space" wherein he selected two students "(one white/Jewish male and one woman of Asian descent)" in each class section based on their seat and "physical size to illustrate a power differential between the large and the small, the oppressed and the oppressor." After the selected students agreed to participate in the exercise, Dr. Loggins took their backpacks and computers and directed them to stand facing the classroom window. Dr. Loggins told the participating students they could come from facing the window if they could produce identification. The purpose of the exercise was to illustrate "profiling and policing within a scripted space." Dr. Loggins asserts Gaza "is an extreme version of a scripted space."

The next day, Defendants Professor Dan Edelstein, Human Resources Director Elizabeth Soroka, and Professor Parna Sengupta accused Dr. Loggins of antisemitism based on the classroom discussions. Defendants Edelstein, Soroka and Sengupta launched an investigation into Dr. Loggins's conduct and suspended him with pay with Stanford's approval. The same day, Defendants then-President Richard Saller and Provost Jenny Martinez released a statement publicizing Stanford's investigation and suspension of Dr. Loggins, though the statement did not identify Dr. Loggins by name.

On March 1, 2024, Defendant Feigelis, a post-doctoral researcher at Stanford, identified Dr. Loggins as one of Stanford's "most racist faculty member[s]" when speaking at a roundtable hosted by the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Education and the Workforce. During the roundtable, Defendant Feigelis published an image claiming Dr. Loggins segregated and publicly shamed Jewish students in his classroom, among other things.

On March 25, 2024, Stanford reported their investigation into Dr. Loggins's classroom discussions "did not support a finding that [Dr. Loggins] intentionally or objectively discriminated against any of the students." Despite the conclusion of Stanford's investigation, Stanford and Defendant Professor and Senior Associate Dean R. Lanier Anderson declined to extend Dr. Loggins's employment contract.

And here is an excerpt from the account in Stanford's motion to dismiss:

Plaintiff was a lecturer in the Stanford Introductory Studies ("SIS") program. On October 10, 2023, he chose to devote his class (in two sections) to the Hamas attack on Israel three days earlier.

By his own account, Plaintiff organized these classes around the theme of "settler colonialism." He called attention to the plight of Palestinian civilians and said he did not "condone the loss of innocent lives," but he does not otherwise claim to have mentioned the hundreds of Israelis who had just been killed, raped, or kidnapped. He asserted that the Holocaust claimed fewer lives than Belgian rule in the Congo and compared it to alleged genocides in the United States, Australia, and elsewhere. At one point he "asked whether any Jewish students were present in the classroom." He asked two students, "one white/Jewish male and one woman of Asian descent," to surrender their backpacks and computers, stand facing the window, and produce identification as a condition of returning to their seats. "The purpose was to do an exercise on profiling and policing within a scripted space."

Even students who later came to Plaintiff's defense acknowledged that "[m]aybe the classroom demonstration wasn't done in the most unproblematic of ways" and that Plaintiff's teaching methods were "easily misconstrued." Other students raised much more serious charges: that "Loggins demanded Jewish students to stand up, took their phones [and] told them to face the wall/sit in the corner;" that "Dr. Loggins was 'singling out' Jewish students;" and that "Loggins went down the line yelling at Jewish students, labeling them as colonizers." Other students denied these charges or sought to put them in context….

Loggins sued Stanford for race and religious discrimination and related claims, on the theory that "Stanford would not have investigated his class sessions, suspended him, publicly announced its investigation and his suspension, or refused to extend his contract '[b]ut for the fact that [Dr. Loggins] [is] black, Muslim and spoke out against Israeli policies that violated the Geneva Convention[.]'" But the court concluded that Loggins hadn't alleged sufficient evidence that Stanford's treatment was motivated by his race or religion. (While the treatment did appear to be motivated by his speech, Loggins hadn't raised claims under which such actions would be illegal.) Loggins still has an opportunity to file a new complaint, though, in which he would have to plausibly allege something that would be sufficiently probative of racial or religious discrimination.

Loggins also sued Kevin Feigelis for defamation, but the court rejected that on the grounds that California law absolutely protects statements "[i]n any … legislative proceeding." (This rejection took place under California's anti-SLAPP law, under which the losing plaintiff would generally be required to pay defendant's attorney fees.)

Alekzandir James Lloyd Morton, Jacob R. Sorensen, and John M. Grenfell (Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP) represent Stanford and its officials; Andrew L. Schwartz, Jason Takenouchi, Joshua E. Roberts, and Lea Dartevelle represent Feigelis.