Follow-Up re: Alleged Discrimination at the University of Oregon Law Review

Ofer Raban, who is a professor at the University of Oregon School of Law (but who, even more clearly than usual for a law professor, is speaking on behalf of himself and not the law school), passed along this follow-up item to an earlier post. I have no direct personal knowledge of the matter, but I thought Prof. Raban’s report was interesting and potentially important. I have tried to get a copy of the investigative report or other related material from the University of Oregon, but have gotten nothing other than a copy of the initial complaint; naturally, if I do get contrary accounts or perspectives, I’d be happy to pass them along.

From Prof. Raban:

As reported here on May 12, in February this year the University of Oregon received a complaint charging unlawful discrimination at the University Oregon Law Review. The Review rejected an article by an Israeli professor—who also teaches in the U.S.—because she is a faculty member at  Tel Aviv University.. The editors’ sense of impunity was such that the discriminatory decision was put in writing. When another editor raised the alarm about the legality of the action, a high-ranking member of the law school administration was consulted and then approved the discrimination. Today, six months after the University received the complaint about this discrimination—which allegedly violated a slew of laws and regulations—no known adverse action has been taken against anyone involved, and the high-ranking official is still holding her prominent position at the law school.

Moreover, in response to my most recent inquiry, the University’s Office of Investigations and Civil Rights Compliance informed me that the results of the investigation will be kept secret because “The outcome of the process implicates confidential employee information that we are typically prohibited from sharing.”

Is that so? In 2016, when the University of Oregon opened an investigation into a blackface episode involving a law school professor (who in fact ineptly advocated for racial equality), the University released the full report of its investigations, issued public condemnations, and publicized its punitive actions against the professor—all while explaining that academic tenure protections prevented her firing.

In sharp contrast, the University of Oregon is presently engaged in a pattern of stonewalling and refusals to address complaints of unlawful anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli harassment and discrimination on campus. This may be unsurprising, given that University of Oregon officials are often themselves the perpetrators of such acts.

As already noted, a high ranking law school official authorized the discrimination at the University of Oregon Law Review; and this year no less than six university departments and centers joined to invite to campus a  speaker who celebrated the October 7 attacks and denies Israel’s right to exist.

When a complaint was filed about this officially-organized and sponsored event with an antisemitic speaker who endorses terrorism (when we cut through the speaker’s lip service to respectability), the University appointed an examiner who concluded that there was no reason to even open an investigation. Her conclusion relied on the claim that the Jewish and Israeli students who joined the complaint (and reported being ostracized and harassed in their classrooms and dormitories as a result of the university-created atmosphere on campus)—did not actually attend that speaker’s event … as if that should matter. (Indeed what Jewish or Israeli student would want to attend such event?)

In the meantime, examples of unaddressed misdeeds by university officials and others continue to accumulate. Materials celebrating the October 7 attacks and calling for the elimination of the Jewish state are distributed on campus from University-owned and -operated office spaces. One such pamphlet decries efforts aimed at at a two-state solution by protesting (in the obscure vernacular typical of such political manifestos):

This effort aims to depoliticize the fighter through the offer of reintegration into the social and economic order administered by the Palestinian Authority. This tactic seeks to erase the space carved out by resistance. The negotiation is premised on unraveling the wager that the fighter has already made—a wager on death, on ethics, on unknown horizons of politics.

Such materials, which echo the position of the terrorist organization Hamas and call for the violent eradication of Israel, are distributed to students from offices at the University of Oregon’s principal Student Center—despite repeated complaints about the matter.

As for the attempt to bury the investigation at the Oregon Law Review: The University of Oregon—a public educational institution entrusted, among other things, with educating the next generation of American lawyers—is engaged in a blatant cover-up of seemingly unlawful actions perpetrated by students and administration officials at the law school. What kind of a message does this send to America’s future lawyers and judges? What are University of Oregon law students to think when their own university acts lawlessly?

In his recent commencement address, University of Oregon president Karl Scholz sanctimoniously called on the graduating students to “stay true to [their] values.” We are left to hope that their values are different than his.

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