Legal Commentary

EEOC Determination in the Debbie Almontaser / Khalil Gibran International Academy / Intifada NYC T-Shirt Case

By Eugene Volokh

The New York Times reports, linking to the full determination. Here?s the background:

The controversy surrounding the dual-language [English-Arabic public] school [the Khalil Gibran International Academy] began in early 2007, shortly after the city announced that Ms. Almontaser, a longtime teacher, would lead it. A group of opponents, including conservative commentators and a City University trustee, mounted a campaign against the school and Ms. Almontaser, claiming that she carried a militant Islamic agenda....

The conflict came to a head that August, when Ms. Almontaser?s opponents, who had formed the Stop the Madrassa Coalition, asserted that she was connected to T-shirts bearing the words ?Intifada NYC.? While Ms. Almontaser was on the board of an organization that rented space to the group that distributed the shirts, she was unaware of them, she said. (The commission determined that she had no connection to the T-shirts.)

Nonetheless, in response to mounting inquiries about the shirts, the Department of Education pressured her to give an interview to The New York Post, she said. In that interview, with a department employee listening in, she explained that the root of the word intifada meant ?shaking off,? but that it had acquired other connotations because of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle.

The next day, The Post published the article under the headline ?City Principal Is ?Revolting? ? Tied to ?Intifada NYC? Tee Shirts,? stating that Ms. Almontaser had ?downplayed the significance? of the T-shirts. (Federal judges later issued a ruling ? related to a lawsuit brought by Ms. Almontaser ? stating that The Post had reported her words ?incorrectly and misleadingly.?) ...

The EEOC determined that the New York City Department of Education discriminated against Almontaser based on her race, religion, and national origin, by capitulating to the public hostility that the EEOC saw as motivated in large part by her race, religion, and national origin. An interesting story, which I thought I?d note.

Full post as published by The Volokh Conspiracy on March 16, 2010 (boomark / email).