An adjunct professor of sociology at the University of Oregon has filed a $1.1-million lawsuit against the authors of a newspaper column that claimed that he had bashed Israel and Jews in one of his classes.
The professor, Douglas Card, filed the lawsuit last week after spending nearly a year trying to persuade the authors of the column, Daniel Pipes and Jonathan Schanzer, to print a retraction. Mr. Card also wanted the article removed from Campus Watch, a Web site that is sponsored by the Middle East Forum, a pro-Israel research organization that Mr. Pipes directs.
In the column, which ran in the New York Post in June 2002, Mr. Pipes and Mr. Schanzer wrote that the professor had called Israel "a terrorist state" and said that Israelis were "baby-killers." The column also cited an unidentified student who accused Mr. Card of bashing Israel and Jews "at every opportunity."
The accusations are false, according to Mr. Card, who said he was not contacted before the column was published. "There was no truth to it at all," said the professor. "To be accused of vile anti-Semitism is as opposite to who I am as anything could be."
by editor on September 17, 2003 at 11:49 AM