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U. of Iowa Considers Firing Professor Who Sent ‘Prejudiced’ E-Mail

February 17, 2011, 2:39 pm

The University of Iowa has started a disciplinary hearing that could lead to the firing of Malik E. Juweid, a radiology professor who is accused of sending “prejudiced, insulting, and inflammatory” e-mail messages to colleagues that call them anti-Arab and anti-Muslim. In an interview with the Associated Press, Mr. Juweid, who is Christian and was born in Jordan, said, “I feel that about 10 percent of my department employees are prejudiced, bigots, Arab-haters, and Muslim-haters. Thank God, 90 percent of people are decent people who are not like that.”

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  • cwinton

    Yet again, don’t post anything to anyone that you wouldn’t be willing to have shared with persons unknown. Given the imperfections of human memory, one may be able to put a bit of verbal intemperance in a more favorable light, but it’s pretty hard to duck what you’ve said in print.

  • cu_alum

    The email sounds intemperate even if what it says is true. But intemperate is not the same thing as illegal. Even if Prof. Juweid’s statements are false, the First Amendment protects them. We are allowed to say things that are “prejudiced, insulting, and inflammatory”. As a state institution, the University of Iowa cannot exceed the constitutional authority of the state. And pursuant to the Fourteenth Amendment, the First Amendment applies to state governments just as it does to the federal government. Barring some unusual facts, firing Prof. Juweid — or disciplining him in any way — would be unconstitutional. All of this is on top of the protections afforded by tenure and academic freedom.

  • jerryvandesic

    If Juweid has a good lawyer he will probably recieve a nice settlement after suing the university for violating his civil rights.

  • edwoof

    I don’t have any problem at all with this e-mail. I also don’t see how the e-mail is prejudiced or insulting since no names were mentioned. This alo specifically relates to his work environment and I certainly believe it is within his rights as well as interest to make these kind of observations:

    Let me ask a few hypotheticals:

    1. What if he said in a faculty meeting, “I feel that some people in the department are prejudiced against Muslims and this is affecting my ability to work effectively?” Could he actually be fired for raising this issue?

    2. What if I sent an e-mail to my colleagues that said “I believe that about 10% of my department are homophobic.” Is this insulting or prejudiced? Should I be fired for raising this issue?

    This is so much like academia. We state that we support the rights of free expression and speech, except when it happens in our backyard. This is like supporting worker’s rights in the abstract, but creating a serfdom in the English department.

  • mbelvadi

    Setting aside the issue of a lack of identified target for a moment, since when has calling someone else prejudiced been itself a prejudiced communication? Doesn’t that sound rather Orwellian? Insulting and inflammatory, perhaps, but not prejudiced.

  • mickfan

    Simply because something is a right, it does not make it something one should do. We all have a right to be jerks. We have a right to say what we want, but perhaps there are times when we should not. Open Records, Right to Know. . . we must put in email those things that we wouldn’t mind having on the front page of the newspaper.

  • chrisboyatzis

    if this email by itself is grounds for dismissal…god help us all

  • dollsey74

    While we do have freedom of speech in this country (one of the rights that makes this place great), there are limitations to it. Defamation is one. I’m not stating that what Mr. Juweid did was libel (since I am not a lawyer); only making an observation. I’d like to know what is his proof.

    If someone wanted to accuse me of something, they should say it to my face. Email can be such a chicken-@*#& way of confronting people.

  • elyria

    If this is the total of his actual email, it makes no sense that they would consider any disciplinary action, much less dismissal.

    Either there is much more to the story than this, or someone has very poor judgment.

  • pokerphd

    After reading the AP story, I think we would need to see the few dozen other e-mails before leveling our aye/nay on this one. I would only go so far at this point to say that UI may have a problem with progressive discipline. That is, where’s the colleague/chair/dean who collegially takes Dr. Juweid aside after the first few e-mails and tries to seek a solution, have a conversation, um, dare I say “mediate” the situation? It might never have escalated to a possible termination, e-mail account revocation, and a CHE footnote.

  • 11134078

    Back in the early days of Email when I was a dean, I regularly notified the faculty that there was no right of privacy for Email sent over the university’s servers and that therefore they should send nothing they weren’t prepared to see in the NY Times the next day. This warning—need I say this?—was regularly ignored. But the result of ignoring such warnings may be exposure to protests by the immaturely hypersensitive to something or other you wrote. People do not seem to be growing up much these days.

  • teacherspaddle

    The quote in the article by the professor is NOT from the email, nor is it evidence in this case.

  • ionaferrari

    See the following AP story for further details: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-ia-iowaprofessor-inv,0,3131051.story

    Note that this is an ongoing situation: “…Juweid signed an agreement in 2008 to clean up his e-mails after the school received complaints about their tone and content. Juweid identified those who complained as a prominent University of Chicago professor and a National Institutes of Health employee. “–from the above referenced AP article.

    See also: http://www.circare.org/fdawls3/juweid_20010223.pdf

  • ionaferrari

    Additionally, at this URL you can see a string of emails from the professor to various UI administrators which the professor has seen fit to share with commentators on Huffington Post in response to an article there:

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/professorjuweid?action=comments

  • burger1376

    But if he was white and sending emails to black or Arab peers, he would be arrested for Hate Crimes. There is racism in American, but it is only against White people.

  • burger1376

    Like I said to another poster, if he were white and complained about liberal professors’ racism against poor whites, he would have been arrested on hate crimes.

  • cu_alum

    No he wouldn’t. Being hateful is not enough to turn an action into a hate crime; it must also be a crime independently of the motive. Sending a “prejudiced, insulting, and inflammatory” email isn’t a crime regardless of its author’s race.

  • burger1376

    Ok, be white and try it sometime. See what happens.

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