Linfield University Settles Lawsuit With Jewish Prof Over Retaliation Claims for $1 Million

Linfield University Settles Lawsuit With Jewish Prof Over Retaliation Claims for $1 Million

We covered this story back in April of 2021. Professor Daniel Pollack-Pelzner alleged that the school president made anti-Semitic remarks.

Algemeiner reports:

Linfield University Pays $1 Million to End Lawsuit Alleging Retaliation Against Jewish Professor

Linfield University has settled for over $1 million a lawsuit alleging that it fired a professor for exposing sexual abuse and complaining about antisemitism.

Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, who was a tenured English professor at the university — which is located in McMinnville, Oregon — alleged breach of contract, retaliation and an attempt to “silence” his disclosures of gross misconduct, according to a complaint filed in Jan. 2021.

“We are so proud of Dr. Pollack-Pelzner’s unwavering courage to speak truth to power and to advocate for meaningful change on behalf of his students and fellow professors at Linfield,” Pollack-Pelzner’s attorney, Dana L. Sullivan said in a statement on Feb. 6. “Ultimately, we hope his case sends a clear message that sexual harassment must not be tolerated on any campus and that institutions that seek to silence whistleblowers will be held to account.”

Recently, The Oregonian, a local daily, reported that Linfield University agreed to pay Pollack-Pelzner $1,037,500 while declining to concede that his version of events is true. Scott Nelson, a university spokesperson told the paper that internal discussions yielded a consensus that it was “preferable to resolve this situation and move on.”

In his legal complaint, Pollack-Pelzner said he first raised concerns about several trustees accused of sexual harassment and sexual assault after becoming a university trustee in 2019. In one case, a trustee who later resigned was indicted on charges of abusing four students. Pollack-Pelzner additionally claimed that he asked the university to address the problem with more training and other measures, but was rebuffed by President Miles Davis, who asked him to withdraw a faculty report detailing other allegations of harassment.

Davis later accused Pollack-Pelzner of pursuing a “secret agenda” aimed at “destroying Linfield from within.”

That same day, Davis is said to have asked in a faculty meeting why several Linfield professors had been “so concerned” with swastikas and other racist and antisemitic graffiti recently discovered on campus. In the past, Pollack-Pelzner also alleged, Davis had made antisemitic remarks about “Jewish noses” during a discussion of Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice.”

Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.