George Washington University retaliated against Jewish students who lodged antisemitism complaint, federal probe finds

In the complaint, Jewish students said that Sheehi, the GW psychology professor, targeted them for their religion and Israeli nationality.

By Alana Goodman, The Washington Free Beacon

A federal civil rights investigation uncovered evidence that the George Washington University faculty retaliated against Jewish students based on “shared ancestry-related advocacy” by placing them in a remediation program after the students lodged an anti-Semitism complaint against an anti-Israel professor.

The Department of Education also ordered the school to conduct a review of former GW psychology professor Lara Sheehi’s social media posts—which included calls to “destroy Zionism” and described Israelis as “genocidal fucks”—to determine if the comments created a “hostile environment” for Jewish and Israeli students.

The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights raised the concerns in a confidential settlement letter with GW on Jan. 16, which followed a two-year investigation, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

As part of the settlement, GW agreed to “review and revise” its anti-discrimination policies and train professors against “unlawful discrimination.” The school also agreed to expunge any disciplinary action from the students’ records.

A group of Jewish and Israeli psychology students at GW filed the civil rights complaint in 2023, saying the school failed to protect them after they were “singled out for repeated and persistent harassment” by anti-Israel professors and classmates in the program and later subjected to retaliation when they complained.

In the letter, the civil rights office said it had “concern that the students may have been placed on remediation plans in retaliation for asserting their rights” under the Civil Rights Act’s Title VI anti-discrimination clause.

It added that the decisions to place those students into a remediation program “appear to encompass [the students’] shared ancestry-related advocacy.”

“Evidence provided to OCR indicated that the students made in-class statements during the course that constituted protected activity,” the letter stated.

StandWithUs, the group that brought the complaint on behalf of the students, told the Free Beacon that the settlement letter was a positive step.

“StandWithUs welcomes this result, as well as the requirement that GW must also remove all vestiges of the retaliatory disciplinary process to which Sheehi and fellow Program faculty subjected some of those students when they displayed the courage to speak up about the antisemitism they were experiencing,” said Carly Gammill, the group’s director of legal policy.

In the complaint, Jewish students said that Sheehi, the GW psychology professor, targeted them for their religion and Israeli nationality. When one of the students introduced herself to the class as an Israeli, Sheehi responded, “It’s not your fault you were born in Israel,” according to the complaint.

Sheehi also invited a guest lecturer who reportedly assailed “white Israeli racism” and praised a Palestinian terrorist who stabbed an Israeli child, according to the complaint.

When some Jewish students pushed back on Sheehi’s anti-Israel rhetoric in class, the professor allegedly argued that Zionism was racist and anti-Semitic.

Sheehi reportedly complained about the students to other professors in the psychology program, and “faculty voted to initiate disciplinary proceedings against [the students],” according to the complaint.

Sheehi—who attacked Israel on social media as “racist” and “genocidal”—has since left GW for Hamas-friendly Qatar.

The university hired a law firm to investigate the allegations against her, which found “no evidence substantiating the allegations of discriminatory and retaliatory conduct,” according to a statement from the firm.

But the OCR settlement letter indicates that the case still remains a concern.

The office ordered the school to “evaluate and determine whether a hostile environment based on national origin, including shared ancestry, was created for students on campus as a result of [Sheehi’s] social media activity,” including anything she posted before resigning. GW must submit its findings to OCR by later this spring, according to the settlement.

“Far from exonerating Sheehi or GW, OCR made clear that what happened to these students was wholly unacceptable under Title VI, and it imposes concrete obligations on GW to best ensure that such mistreatment does not recur,” said Gammill.

A GW spokeswoman declined to comment. She directed the Free Beacon to a statement on the school’s website that said the “investigation concluded without any finding that GW was in violation of Title VI nor any other law” and that the settlement was a “voluntary agreement, which is similar to agreements recently adopted by a wide variety of other universities.”