BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
A Stanford lecturer who was suspended for allegedly singling out Jewish students in his classroom and downplaying the Holocaust has sued the university, claiming that Stanford made false accusations against him because he is Black and Muslim.
Lecturer Ameer Loggins said he became the subject of an “unrelenting” racial and religious harassment campaign after Stanford suspended him in October.
In his lawsuit, Loggins included five pages of racist and threatening emails that he received after he was suspended.
In response to the lawsuit, Stanford spokeswoman Dee Mostofi said the university is “disappointed” that Loggins decided to sue.
“We will vigorously defend against the claims being made,” she said.
The incident in question happened on Oct. 10, three days after the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel.
Rabbi Dov Greenberg, executive director of Stanford’s Jewish Student Center, told reporters at the time that Loggins had Jewish students stand up and move to a corner of the room away from their belongings.
This is what Jews do to Palestinians, and Israel is a colonizer, Loggins allegedly said.
Loggins also asked students how many Jews died in the Holocaust. He then brought up genocides where more people had died, according to Greenberg, who spoke with three students.
The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday in federal court, confirms some of Greenberg’s account, but Loggins provides new details and his intentions behind the lesson.
Loggins said that he asked Jewish students to raise their hands “to speak to diversity within the Jewish diaspora.”
Later in the lecture, Loggins said he brought up genocides in the Congo, Rwanda, Hawaii, Haiti and South Africa.
Loggins said he “ensured to mention all of these groups in recognition of the rich diversity which makes up Stanford’s student body.”
Loggins said he did in fact separate students from their backpacks and computers for an exercise about what it’s like to live in Gaza. He said he told students to face a window, acting like a police officer, to show what it’s like to be profiled and policed.
But Loggins said he only picked students based on where they were sitting and their physical size, and not their religions or ethnicities. One student was Jewish and the other was Asian, Loggins said.
Interim President Richard Saller and Provost Jenny Martinez said in a statement on Oct. 11 that the lecturer, who they didn’t name, isn’t teaching while the university investigates.
“Academic freedom does not permit the identity-based targeting of students,” they said.
Loggins said that Stanford treated him differently than law professor Joseph Bankman, the father of cryptocurrency fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried.
In a different lawsuit, Bankman was alleged to have directed a $5.5 million donation from FTX to Stanford.
Bankman allegedly paid for a Stanford law student to attend a Formula One event in France, and that student later became ab employee of FTX, a lawsuit from the FTX estate said.
Yet Stanford didn’t launch an investigation nor suspend Bankman, Loggins said.
R. Lanier Anderson, interim vice provost for undergraduate education, told Loggins that he wouldn’t be coming back to Stanford in a letter on March 25, which was included in the lawsuit.
Loggins’ contract ended on Sunday, and he stayed on paid leave until then, Anderson said.
Stanford found that Loggins didn’t “intentionally or objectively discriminate” against any students, but his teaching strategies were “unwise and might have been predicted to lead to a bad educational outcome,” Anderson said.