A tenured law professor sued the University of Kentucky in the United States on Thursday 13 November after he was banned from teaching and from the law school for comments he made about Israel, including characterisations of the state as a “colonisation project” and calls for the world to wage war against it, writes Alice Speri for The Guardian US.
In a lawsuit filed in federal court, Ramsi Woodcock, an antitrust law scholar, argued that the public university violated his first amendment and due process rights when it abruptly placed him under investigation in July, just days after he was promoted to full professor, over allegations that he violated university policy – including anti-discrimination rules that incorporate a widely disputed definition of antisemitism.
The suit is the first to be filed by a professor against a university that explicitly challenges the constitutionality of the IHRA definition [of antisemitism] and the application of federal Title VI anti-discrimination protections to criticism of Israel.
Full report on The Guardian US site
