There’s no rest for the weary administrators of Ohio University, who are still dealing with the aftermath of a plagiarism scandal in the engineering school that stemmed from a graduate student’s discovery of some 40 mechanical-engineering theses with apparently plagiarized content.

Last week two doctoral students found guilty of plagiarism were told to rewrite their theses, and an Academic Honesty Hearing Committee is reviewing similar allegations against 34 engineering graduates.

The university is already defending itself against a lawsuit filed by a former chair of the mechanical-engineering department, Jay S. Gunasekera, who was found to have supervised the most plagiarized theses. Now it’s also facing a defamation suit by another professor, Bhavin V. Mehta, who, along with Mr. Gunasekera, was stripped of his role as a graduate adviser.

According to the new lawsuit, Mr. Mehta, a non-tenured professor, was told that his contract, which expires next spring, would not be renewed for financial reasons, but that the university had told reporters that the nonrenewal was related to the plagiarism allegations, the Associated Press reported.

Mr. Mehta also asserted that the university’s implicit accusation that he was a negligent adviser was defamatory. He is seeking $25,000 in damages. A university spokesman has said that Ohio will “appropriately defend ourselves.”