FIX EXCLUSIVES
Stanford spokesperson says a university investigation found the researcher’s antisemitism allegations to be ‘unsubstantiated’
A Jewish Israeli researcher is suing Stanford University after allegedly encountering discrimination and sabotage while working in the lab — claims that the university denies.
Chemist Shay Laps received a postdoctoral appointment at Stanford in April 2024, following a recommendation by a Nobel Laureate, to continue his work on developing a new diabetes treatment, according to a news release by the Brandeis Center for Human Rights, which is representing him.
However, he alleges in a federal lawsuit that a fellow lab staffer targeted him because he was a Jewish scientist from Israel and, when he complained to university leaders, they did nothing. Laps eventually resigned.
Stanford spokesperson Luisa Rapport told The College Fix that Laps’ claims were handled properly.
“Stanford takes any allegation of antisemitism very seriously. In this instance and based on all the allegations that Dr. Laps reported directly to the institution, a thorough internal investigation found that they were unsubstantiated,” Rapport said in an email last week.
However, Laps’ lawyers contradicted this in a statement to The Fix.
“When Dr. Laps suffered discrimination and retaliation at Stanford based on his religion, national origin, and ethnicity, the university preferred not to look,” attorney Talia Nissimyan of Cohen Williams LLP said. The law firm is representing him alongside the Brandeis Center.
“Instead, they attempted to bury Dr. Laps’ career, and when that didn’t work, to bully him into rescinding his complaints,” Nissimyan said.
His attorneys insist that action was not taken by Stanford to help Laps.
“Instead of upholding the values upon which it was founded, Stanford succumbed to the rising tide of campus anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli bias …We intend to hold Stanford to its highest promise, and bring this action in the hopes that our client can finally secure the accountability he deserves,” Nissimyan said in a statement via email.
According to Laps’ lawsuit, filed in July, the university has been “complicit in permitting an environment saturated with intimidation and harassment” against Jewish employees and students, including what he experienced.
Allegedly, while working in the lab, a staff member told Laps not to speak to her, asked others not to interact with him, and encouraged the rest of the lab staff to shun him, according to his lawsuit. That was only the beginning.
The lawsuit claims that the staffer went as far as sabotage, tampering with Laps’ research, which produced fraudulent results that could have ended his career had he not discovered the malicious activity.
“When Dr. Laps discovered the sabotage of his experiments, the lab’s leader and his mentor refused to address the issue,” a news release about the lawsuit states.
Then, Laps allegedly brought the situation to Stanford’s attention, writing to the university President Jonathan Levin and the School of Medicine Dean Lloyd Minor, but the administration disregarded his claims, his lawsuit alleges.
The Brandeis Center believes the “malicious conduct” he experienced was “merely for being Israeli.”
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When asked about the case, a leader of the Jewish advocacy group Academic Engagement Network described how antisemitism has become a growing concern in university settings.
“It is a pervasive problem on college campuses,” spokesperson Raeefa Shams told The College Fix in a recent interview.
“Survey after survey, both before and after October 7, have shown that growing numbers of Jewish students are experiencing antisemitism on their campuses. The issue extends to the faculty – Jewish, Zionist, and Israeli faculty have faced harassment, sometimes to the extent of having their classes or lectures disrupted, or even needing police protection,” Shams said.
The Academic Engagement Network is an organization that fights to counter antisemitism in university settings by promoting academic freedom and increasing education about Israel.
She said the antisemitism both faculty and students deal with on college campuses has severe consequences.
“Many faculty who are on campuses or in academic disciplines with serious antisemitism problems have said that they feel they no longer have a home there – for faculty who have worked for thirty, forty, or more years, that is a profound loss … many of the issues of erasure, exclusion, and marginalization that students have talked about facing are the same,” Shams said.
And the problems extend beyond feelings of isolation
“For more junior faculty, those without tenure or other job protections, there is a genuine – and justified – fear of professional consequences if they were to ‘out’ themselves as Zionists or in any way connected to Israel, to the extent that some of them are taking conferences, lectures, and other academic work they’ve done in Israel off their CVs,” she told The Fix.
In the case of Laps, his lawyers allege the harassment and discrimination he faced at Stanford cost him years of his career and may have stalled critical breakthroughs in the health of people around the world.
Laps resigned in February, according to the lawsuit.
“Rather than stepping up to protect vulnerable students, the Stanford administration shrunk in the face of responsibility, took action only when needed to protect itself, and ignored the vehement instances of anti-Semitism plaguing their campus,” Brandeis Center CEO Kenneth Marcus stated in a news release. “Their failure to address this behavior, blindly ignoring horrific anti-Semitic harassment and discrimination, is gross negligence and utterly unacceptable.”
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IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: A building on the campus of Stanford University; Ken Wolter/Shutterstock
