Not one sentence of exoneration for Sheehi

Despite recent claims by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) that the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) in the U.S. Department of Education “unequivocally clears and exonerates Dr. Lara Sheehi from any and all claims made by the spurious Title VI complaint by StandWithUs,” the DOE in fact offers her not one sentence of exoneration in the two official investigation outcome reports it provided to the parties involved in mid-January.

Indeed, in what may be the single most dramatic development, George Washington University is required to delete from its files the fact that two of its Jewish psychology graduate students were subjected to a degrading “remediation” process in response to accusations lodged by Sheehi. It was punishment for them exercising their right to complain about antisemitism following a public lecture from a visiting faculty member. The Department of Education has no remedy that would compensate the students for an ordeal that lasted months. But at least the students no longer have to explain the incident to prospective employers. GW has until May to confirm they have deleted the incident.

Both SWU and ADC have issued press releases about the recent OCR reports, but there has been little discussion of the outcomes so far because the reports are not yet publicly available. But there is urgent need for more information about the results of the OCR investigation. The reports were shared with me so that I could reflect on the outcomes and correct some misconceptions. I have written about developments in the case several times before, most extensively in 2023, followed by an update examining Sheehi’s support for Hamas’s 10/7 assault ().

The OCR reports detail the violations of Title VI initiated by Sheehi, compounded by faculty in the Professional Psychology Program, then cemented by GWU’s then-president. They send a clear warning to U.S. universities about the standards and principles that will likely govern similar OCR investigations in the future. They are thus of urgent interest to American universities. The reports do not, however, cover all the issues that should concern the academic community, fundamental to which are the academic freedom violations that were not part of OCR’s remit to review but will be addressed here.

A PUBLIC LECTURE IGNITES A DISPUTE

A series of events grew out of a September 30, 2022, public lecture at GW delivered at Sheehi’s invitation by Hebrew University Israeli-Arab faculty member Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian. Sheehi was teaching the required diversity course for first-year students in GW’s Graduate Program in Psychology that fall. Attendance at the lecture was optional, though several students chose to attend and asked to discuss it at the next class meeting.

The GWU psychology program administrators have a taped copy of the lecture, but they would not grant their own students access to it. OCR, however, obtained both the video and a transcript, and reports that “the Speaker stated, for example, that ‘Israel is a racial and racialized social system’ where ‘white Israeli racism not only shapes the national discussion, but it also limits people’s recognition of problems made apparent as structural.’ The Speaker also argued that the analysis of ‘Israeli scholars . / . is camouflaged by this structure of oppression and settler colonialism.’”  Student notes taken during Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s presentation record her relentless attack on all Israeli humanitarian services on the West bank and elsewhere. She displayed two slides depicting numerous examples of Israeli good works, like Lara Sheehi characterizing them as cynical efforts to distract from Israeli crimes.

It is a normal feature of academic debate to subject such views to intense criticism, though that is not OCR’s focus. The claim is that the remediation was retaliation against students who exercised their right to protest against antisemitism, which is a protected activity. The reports document that Sheehi questioned Jewish students’ ethics and professionalism for their classroom observations and later pressed her colleagues for the students to be subjected to an Orwellian disciplinary process. Five students met virtually with the program director to register their distress at the Shalhoub-Kevorkian presentation, but that was not enough to deter the program from disciplining student speech.

After Sheehi campaigned for that result, two Jewish graduate students in the GWU psychology program were required to confess their sins and undergo ethical and professional remediation if they wished to be approved as therapists. OCR’s judgment is unreserved: “OCR has a concern that [those students] may have been placed on remediation plans in retaliation for asserting their rights under Title VI. Specifically, OCR is concerned that the reasons provided by the Program [for their] remediation plans appear to encompass their shared ancestry-related advocacy.” As if this devastating conclusion were not enough, OCR hammers home the point: “Evidence provided to OCR indicated that [the students] made in-class statements during Course, including on October 3, 2022, that constituted protected activity.”  That was the date of the now notorious class discussion of the lecture. In addition to inviting her, Sheehi had praised her highly in print. Sheehi accused the Jewish students of being racist and unprofessional in their critique of the presentation. One might add, thinking beyond Title VI’s concern with shared ancestry, that, as the student statements implicated their religious identity, their speech implicated religious freedom. They should also have been protected by academic freedom; indeed, critical analysis of faculty presentations is fundamental to academic freedom.

THE TWO JANUARY 2025 OCR DOCUMENTS

         I was offered restricted access to the two slightly redacted documents this February. They were distributed to the parties involved, respectively, on January 16 and 17 of this year. They were a 12-page “resolution Agreement” signed by George Washington University and a 29-page letter addressed to SWU. The site I was permitted to visit enabled me to take notes over the course of a day but it prevented me from downloading or printing the documents. I thus am unable to share the documents, though OCR will hopefully distribute redacted versions soon.

         The two documents reflect GWU’s decision to resolve two January 2023 complaints—the first representing Jewish and the second representing Palestinian students at GWU—by reforming its current procedures for resolving complaints of harassment and unequal treatment. The documents are impressively detailed and clearly represent a thorough investigation of the issues raised by the students SWU has represented. OCR makes it clear that GWU did not fulfill its obligations to either Jewish or Palestinian students.

For the investigation to have been completed, OCR would have reached judgments about wrongdoing by GWU. By seeking a resolution, GWU circumvented that result, instead making explicit commitments to change its practices and do so on a specific expedited schedule. But the OCR’s factual determinations were in fact complete. One important area is left to investigate—whether former GWU psychology professor Lara Sheehi’s hundreds of antizionist tweets served to create a hostile environment for Jewish students. GWU is charged with resolving that question.

The letter to SWU makes it clear what the outcome of the DOE investigation has been:

OCR has identified concerns regarding whether the University provided, consistent with the requirements of Title VI and its implementing regulation, prompt and effective responses to reports of harassment based on shared ancestry to effectively end harassment, eliminate any hostile environment and its effects, and prevent harassment from recurring, including concerns regarding whether the University’s grievance procedures in effect at the time hindered its ability to do so; whether the University retaliated against [two Jewish students] for reporting alleged harassment based on shared ancestry by placing them on remediation plans; and whether the University subjected [redacted] to different treatment. OCR has determined that it is appropriate to resolve these concerns. (p. 2)

The key actor at the center of many of these concerns is Lara Sheehi. The complaint of course was directed at the university, not Sheehi, but her actions and conduct are detailed in the letter. Because OCR investigations are designed to investigate the responsibilities of universities, not of individuals, one should not expect, therefore, that a direct statement of wrongdoing by Sheehi would have been forthcoming even if GWU had not opted for a resolution agreement. But it is Sheehi who triggered the whole series of events, for whom CR’s repeatedly expressed “concerns” are the exact opposite of an exoneration.

The letter proceeds to detail the evidence for OCR’s concerns and thus why GWU’s policies and practices will need to be reformed. Most of the resulting requirements are campus wide, such as the distribution of “a statement that retaliation is prohibited against persons who report discrimination or participate in related proceedings” or the requirement that “the University will conduct nondiscrimination training for students and employees on discrimination, including on the basis of national origin, including shared ancestry and ethnic characteristics.” Responsible staff are to get annual training. The University is to adopt “remedial measures to ensure that any hostile environment created by the harassment is eliminated.” These requirements send a clear message to all institutions facing comparable complaints now or in the future. They should be instructive for campuses throughout the West, not just those in the U.S. The principles at stake, counteracting hostile environments, protecting students’ basic rights, should be universal.

         The Resolution Agreement finally singles out the Professional Psychology program, specifying that all its instructional staff and administrators will be trained that retaliation against anyone reporting abridgement of their rights is unlawful. That makes it clear that the OCR found both Sheehi’s and the program’s conduct unacceptable. There will be further details as this chapter proceeds.

In a particularly irresponsible statement, ADC insists that the OCR investigation found “no evidence” of discrimination or retaliation against Jewish or Israeli students.  In fact, OCR declares it “found insufficient evidence” in regard to one and only one small element of the complaint, the claim that Sheehi’s response to Jewish student journal entries represented retaliation. ADC escalates “insufficient evidence” to “no evidence,” applying a characterization that occurs in a quite different place in the OCR letter—in its summary of the dishonorable statement by the GWU administration’s hired lawyers. ADC deliberately and willfully pretends that the GW hired lawyers’ failure to find adequate evidence applies to the OCR investigation. In actuality, OCR finds serious reasons for concern about every other element of the claim that it investigated. Recognizing that, GWU agreed to its own elaborate remediation.

OCR TAKES A POSITION ON SOCIAL MEDIA STATEMENTS

In agreeing to explore whether Sheehi’s antisemitic tweets created a hostile environment for Jewish students, both OCR and GWU enter a recently fraught area of higher education debate. For a decade, the American Association of University Professors has maintained that all faculty statements on social media are immune from professional evaluation and critique. For some years, the AAUO’s position attracted relatively little attention. But the huge increase in social media activity over the past several yeas has gradually drawn more attention to the AAUP decision to protect all social media from professional consequences. The worldwide flood of antisemitic messages since October 7, 2023, has now put the AAUP’s stand under intense scrutiny. In company with the group’s August 2024 decision to reverse its policy against boycotts of Israeli universities, its appointment of a career antizionist to head its major policy-making body, and the election of a prominent Rutgers University antizionist as its new president, the AAUP has positioned itself at the head of faculty antizionism. The AAUP would protect antisemitic tweets or Instagram posts even if the faculty member distributing them does research on or teaches about Israel.

OCR is quite clear on this issue. The Resolution Agreement specifies that “in determining whether harassment constitutes a hostile environment, the University may consider harassment that occurs outside of the University’s programs, including activity on private social media accounts.” The agreement does not mention the AAUP, but it flatly rejects the AAUP stand on social media. The AAUP and the OCR are now in direct conflict. I’m willing to place my bets on the OCR. The agreement later directs that “the University will evaluate and determine whether a hostile environment based on national origin, including shared ancestry, was created for students on campus as a result of the Professor’s social media activity, including anything posted through the date that the Professor [Sheehi] resigned from the University.” If a hostile environment is confirmed, remediation must follow. GWU is given until May 2025 to complete this process. GWU is charged to provide the very professional evaluation of social media that the AAUP would prohibit. The principle that statements made on social media are among a faculty member’s professional activities and subject to evaluation, once again, has universal application. It should be applied in all democratic countries.

         The challenge for GWU, then, is to consider whether hundreds of  Sheehi tweets like these contributed to creating a hostile environment for its Jewish students: “I hope everyone sleeps blissfully tonight, except for all you motherfuckers who still contest whether Palestine is occupied. You sleep on a bed of nails, hell’s heat, and bed bugs” (2017); “FUCK ZIONISM, ZIONISTS, AND SETTLER COLONIALISM using Palestinian lives as examples of their boundless cruelty and power. Anyone who can’t yet get it, peddles ‘both sides’ bs and doesn’t denounce this persistent violence is complicit” (2020); “If you see this and STILL entertain for even a split second that Hamas is a terrorist entity, there is literally zero hope for you, your soul, or your general existence as an ethical human being in this world” (2021); “YOU CANNOT BE A ZIONIST AND A FEMINIST AT THE SAME TIME” (2021).

There is no guarantee that GWU will confront this task forthrightly, which would mean giving full attention both to the Jewish students in Sheehi’s 2022 class and to others on campus, but several developments open the possibility. GWU’s president during the height of the controversy, Mark S. Wrighton, was fully committed to the project of discrediting Sheehi’s Jewish students. But GWU’s new president as of July 2023, Ellen M. Granberg, does not share that biased history. She should be much more free to face the truth. Most importantly, Sheehi sannounced her resignation in January 2025. She took a position at Doha Institute for Graduate Studies in Qatar, notably the same country that offers refuge to Hamas leaders. Sheehi had actually been on leave in Qatar for much of 2024, but that fact had not been publicly disclosed. Her open endorsement of the 10/7 Hamas assault will have cost her some faculty support, though there will still be some who insist any criticism of Sheehi’s tweets constitutes a violation of academic freedom. The Resolution Agreement should disallow that argument. It was signed in the last days of the Biden administration, but it seems certain the Trump administration will take the same position.

There is a file of 9776 of Sheehi’s dated tweets available for study. Some respond to tweets by others. In May 2018, during the protests along the Gaza border with Israel, US senator Bernie Sanders tweeted “Over 50 killed in Gaza today and 2,000 wounded, on top of the 41 killed and more than 9,000 wounded over the past weeks. This is a staggering toll. Hamas violence does not justify Israel firing on unarmed protesters.” She responded: “You cowardly, spineless fuck. Had to throw Hamas in there right? Can’t just make a statement of support for Palestinians being massacred. 11 THOUSAND wounded over the month, almost 100 dead including kids and press. No amount of ‘socialism’ can shake Empire in your bones.”

TOWARD ACADEMIC FREEDOM

The names of individuals were redacted from the versions I saw. Even Sheehi is only referred to as “the professor,” though she was the faculty member teaching the required course for psychology graduate students that is at issue throughout. Her role has been covered in dozens of news stories, so her identity was public from the outset. But the identity of all the students involved, a number of whom talked with OCR, has been successfully protected.

Over the course of more than two years working on this case, I have consulted repeatedly and at length with multiple people and frequently shared drafts of what I was writing. I have been in weekly dialogue with more than a score of psychologists and psychiatrists who have been analyzing the case. Their feedback has been essential.

Every OCR investigation offers significant lessons to all of American higher education. But the GW case raises new issues and offers exceptional detail. Much more of that detail is in the two documents themselves. There is considerable information about GWU’s remarkably confused system for handling student harassment complaints. Responsibilities were incomprehensibly divided among several units. The duties sometimes overlapped and sometimes were in conflict. That will all have to be reconceptualized in 2025. GW is also required to conduct a student survey covering the experience of discrimination and harassment based on national origin. Every college and university administrator should read the full texts.

The narrative that unfolds in the letter to SWU steadily implicates academic freedom issues that it does not directly address. Graduate students do not have the same level of academic freedom as faculty members, but their right to analyze, endorse, or condemn academic statements, presentations, and publications is fully supported. Yet all the responsible parties at GW sequentially combined forces in an effort to overturn that right. As OCR informs us, some of the faculty members in the psychology program abstained from a vote to sanction the students and some voted against it, but those voting in favor carried the day. Beginning with Sheehi herself, the exercise of a fundamental professional right was castigated as unprofessional. OCR does not exonerate Sheehi for retaliating against her students and triggering an assault on a core principle of higher education.

Cary Nelson is an emeritus professor at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the author, most recently, of Mindless: What Happened to Universities?