By Peter Schmidt

A chemist who has received international recognition for her work in science education is suing Columbia College Chicago for $15-million in connection with the decision to dismiss her and ban her from campus last October. The suit alleges discrimination, defamation, breach of contract, and other harms.

In a lawsuit filed this month in U.S. District Court, Zafra M. Lerman, a former professor of science and public policy who had run the college's Institute for Science Education and Science Communication, is seeking at least $5-million in compensatory damages and at least $10-million in punitive damages in connection with her termination.

Officials of the private college, which specializes in the arts and media, declined Wednesday to comment on the lawsuit. "As we do in any litigation case, we will let the legal process play out and withhold our comments until the matter is resolved," a spokeswoman for the college, Diane Doyne, said in an e-mail message.

Ms. Lerman has long had an uneasy relationship with the college, where she had taught for 32 years, before her dismissal. In 1991, the college had shifted her out of a position as chairwoman of its math and science department after she became caught up in a dispute with faculty members there. In 2005, she sharply criticized university administrators for conducting a late-night raid of her institute's offices to gather evidence used to dismiss a teaching assistant who had created a cartoon lampooning the college's president. She subsequently protested a reorganization of the institute, complaining that administrators had carried it out without sufficient faculty input, in an apparent effort to tarnish her reputation.

Despite her tensions with her supervisors, Ms. Lerman had remained a prominent figure in the fields of science and science education, winning dozens of national and international awards. She also had a high profile as a peace activist, playing a lead role in the American Chemical Society's efforts to organize international conferences intended to promote collaboration between scientists in the Middle East.

Lawsuit Claims

The claims against Columbia College Chicago contained in Ms. Lerman's lawsuit echo the discrimination and retaliation complaints she filed in February with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. On April 1, the commission dropped her case and granted her permission to sue, based on its conclusion that it probably would be unable to process her complaint in a timely manner.

In her lawsuit, Ms. Lerman traces her latest tensions with the college to last May, when she complained that administrators had denied due process to a faculty member of Palestinian descent who was accused of making an anti-Jewish remark.

In the months following, the lawsuit alleges, the provost, Steven Kapelke, ordered the college's human resources department to investigate Ms. Lerman's performance of her duties. When Ms. Lerman complained to Mr. Kapelke that one of her subordinates was falsifying records and failing to do promised work in connection with federal grant funds, the college responded by investigating Ms. Lerman's own handling of the grant funds.

When Ms. Lerman subsequently accused college administrators of discrimination and retaliation in connection with their handling of the grant controversy, the college fired her and banned her from campus, saying her continued presence "was disruptive or could cause harm to the college or its students," her lawsuit says. It also refused to transfer to her funds donated for a forthcoming Middle East conference being held by the college in a trust and otherwise sought to impede her efforts to carry out the event, the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit accuses the college's president, Warrick L. Carter, of defamation for telling other people, including members of the Illinois Congressional delegation and their staffs, that she had misappropriated and improperly handled grant funds.

It also contends that university administrators conspired to hamstring the efforts of the faculty panel that heard her appeal of her termination, by refusing to produce the witnesses the panel requested or to provide it with other information. That panel, the Elected Representatives of the College, subsequently found in Ms. Lerman's favor, but Mr. Carter rejected its conclusions.

The lawsuit accuses the college of discrimination based on Ms. Lerman's assertion that, as a Jewish woman, she has been treated differently than other employees have been treated in similar circumstances.

Group Monitors Case

The American Association of University Professors is tracking Ms. Lerman's case and has weighed in on her behalf with the college. In a November letter to Mr. Carter, the college's president, the AAUP argued that the college had fired her without showing cause and urged that she be reinstated. In a February letter, the group argued that the faculty panel that handled her dismissal appeal did not have sufficient powers and had been improperly kept in the dark by college administrators.

In an interview Wednesday, B. Robert Kreiser, an associate secretary of the AAUP, said the group had just received word of Ms. Lerman's lawsuit and is weighing what actions to take next. Ms. Lerman's case, Mr. Kreiser said, "remains very high on our agenda as a matter of basic concern under principles of academic freedom, tenure, and due process."