A former Oberlin College & Conservatory professor fired after her anti-Semitic online posts drew international criticism has settled a discrimination lawsuit she filed against the college after her ouster.
The terms of the settlement reached by Joilynn Karega-Mason and the college are confidential. However, the settlement was noted on the docket Monday of the case Karega-Mason filed against Oberlin in November 2018.
Karega-Mason’s attorney Gary Benjamin said he and his client were happy to resolve the lawsuit. An Oberlin spokesman did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Karega-Mason, who worked as an assistant professor of rhetoric and composition from December 2013 to November 2016, was fired after some pro-Israel organizations publicized some of her online statements.
She posted that Israel was behind the terrorist bombings on Sept. 11, 2001 and the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in 2014. She also wrote that the Islamic State was made up of U.S. and Israeli intelligence personnel and that they – not terrorists – had planned the 2015 attacks on the Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris.
One post included an image of an ISIS fighter taking off a mask of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to posts preserved by the pro-Israel blog The Tower.
Oberlin and its then-President Marvin Krislov released statements in February 2016 that the professor’s posts represented her views alone. College trustees later posted a statement that her statements were “abhorrent.”
The issue sparked debates regarding Karega-Mason’s First Amendment rights. The college announced in August 2016 that Karega-Mason was placed on paid leave, and officials fired her three months later. It said in a statement at the time that Karega-Mason failed to meet “the academic standards that Oberlin requires of its faculty” and did not show intellectual honesty.
The professor said in her lawsuit, though, that Oberlin officials “engaged in an unrelenting and pervasive conspiracy to terminate the employment of Plaintiff” starting in March 2016. She sought more than $885,000.
Karega-Mason said university officials filed false charges of professional misconduct, solicited student complaints, tried to eliminate black people from having the authority to make decisions for the college and ignored racist language and discrimination committed by men and white women.
The lawsuit also said officials solicited “professionals” from throughout the U.S. “in an effort to generate and manipulate adverse opinion(s)” against her.
The suit added that the college’s Professional Conduct Review Committee found that none of her actions warranted being fired or suspended, yet Krislov and Oberlin trustees ignored the committee’s findings.