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Triggered diversity professor berates student for using term ‘terrorist attack’, formal complaint claims

February 2, 2023 | | Print Article

A woke clinical psychologist and professor named Dr. Lara Sheehi, who teaches a mandatory diversity class at George Washington University, allegedly verbally attacked a student who used the term “terrorist attack” and got slapped with a complaint for it.

The student asserts that she created a hostile environment that promoted violence against civilians, according to the complaint that was filed with the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights and reported by Fox News.

The professor sits on the board of the USA-Palestine Mental Health Network and clinically takes her cues from “a trans-inclusive feminist and liberation theory model.” She also “works on race and white supremacy,[and] decolonial struggles.”

The attack allegedly came while Sheehi was teaching a course concerning “diversity awareness” to “sensitize future therapists to biases.” She reportedly gave a student a verbal lashing while they were discussing terrorist attacks in Israel which have killed civilians, including Americans.

According to the complaint, Sheehi “took offense at the student’s use of the term ‘terrorist attack.’”

The Washington Free Beacon which was the first to report on the altercation stated, “The professor then claimed that the student’s comment invoked Islamophobia even though the student never mentioned Palestinians, Arabs, or Muslims in her comment.”

The attack actually began at the beginning of the class when all the students were asked to introduce themselves. One student said she was born in Israel.

“It’s not your fault you were born in Israel,” Sheehi allegedly told her, according to the Free Beacon.

The complaint continued, charging that the professor brought in a speaker who “advocated violence against Israelis—and by extension Jews.”

A Jewish student commented that they were “crying,” and feeling “deeply unsettled and unsafe” after the speaker was allowed to make the presentation.

The complaint went on to detail how Sheehi was told by a student that they felt “unsafe in a program that would invite a speaker who endorsed violence against Israeli civilians and who, therefore, may celebrate the murder of her Israeli relatives.” Sheehi responded by calling the student’s comment a “damaging Islamophobic anti-Palestinian” comment and added that “a stone is nothing compared to an army.”

“[T]he fact of the matter is that a speaker was brought in [by Sheehi] that advocated violence against Israelis—and by extension Jews—and that is antisemitic, yet is being explained away,” the student claimed.

When students complained to the university, the professor allegedly retaliated against them.

“She began to retaliate against us,” one of those students involved told the Free Beacon. “She began to spread lies about us to the faculty—smearing our reputations to the people who are going to be our clinical supervisors for years to come.”

Palestinian groups like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have targeted both Americans and civilians in Israel with terror attacks for decades.

Sheehi is now being represented by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, which, of course, is blaming the students and basically calling them liars and Islamophobes. They paint the professor as the victim.

In a statement, they asserted that Sheehi was “being wrongfully accused of discrimination and antisemitism” due to “a larger campaign that is politically and ethnically motivated against Dr. Sheehi because of her scholarship and political activism outside the classroom.”

“We understand that these claims would otherwise not have resulted in such an exaggerated and prejudicial response by [George Washington], nor would they have found traction in public opinion if Dr. Sheehi were not Arab and her scholarship and activism were not focused on Palestine. These slander campaigns, intended to silence dissenting voices, are rooted in anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian racism, a form of racism that silences, excludes, erases, stereotypes, defames, and dehumanizes Arabs and their narratives,” the ADC added.

StandWithUs is representing the students involved and has filed a Title VI complaint against Sheehi in the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, accusing her of being antisemitic toward Jewish and Israeli students in her graduate-level Diversity I course.

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