Indiana University doctoral student Sabina Ali has taken the school, along with two top officials tied to its Jewish studies program, to federal court over what she says was retaliation for her pro-Palestinian expression.
The lawsuit, filed June 26 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, names the IU Board of Trustees, interim director of IU’s Borns Jewish Studies Program Günther Jikeli and executive dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Rick Van Kooten. Backed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the suit alleges First Amendment violations and breach of contract.
Ali is asking the court to declare that the defendants violated her First Amendment rights and breached a contract, to bar future discrimination or retaliation against her, and to award damages.
The dispute centers on a Sept. 19, 2025 Zoom meeting for a faculty-student book workshop and discussion of “The Woman Question in Jewish Studies.”
According to the suit, Ali joined the call with a profile image showing a drawing of a woman in a keffiyeh, standing in front of a Palestinian flag with the words “Free Palestine” above it. The suit says she had used that image for about two years to express her belief that “Palestine and Palestinian people should have freedom and self-determination,” according to the suit.
The complaint says Jikeli refused to begin the event unless Ali either turned on her camera or removed the image. When Ali did not respond and faculty reacted with outrage, Jikeli removed her from the meeting. The suit says 20 of the 24 people attending in person then left.
Afterward, Jikeli emailed Jewish Studies students and faculty and described Ali’s profile picture as a “Palestinian terrorist.” He also wrote that “political slogans or provocative images of any kind have no place in our academic settings.”
Ali later filed a formal complaint with IU’s Office of Civil Rights Compliance, arguing that Jikeli’s conduct violated her civil rights, but the office denied it, according to the suit.
In a CAIR press release, Ali tied her case to what she described as a broader pattern at Indiana University. “This lawsuit documents Indiana University’s history of suppressing pro-Palestinian speech, including IU administration’s brutalization of students, faculty, and staff during the Spring 2024 encampment for Gaza,” the release wrote.
Ali said that 100-day on-campus protest and encampment, during which students and faculty called on IU to divest from Israel, is part of the backdrop for the current case. She argues the recent events are an extension of that “ongoing repression.”
“Professor Günther Jikeli has sought to suppress my pro-Palestinian expression, violating my First Amendment rights,” the release wrote. “He has repeatedly falsely characterized activism for Palestinian liberation as ‘terrorism,’ conflated anti-Zionism with antisemitism, and policed the boundaries of Jewish identity to exclude anti-Zionist voices.”
Ali also said Jikeli’s conduct went beyond the Zoom incident. In the release, she said his actions showed “disregard for democratic faculty governance” and included “denying my conference travel funding as targeted punishment for my speech.” She added that it “undermines academic freedom and creates a toxic environment of fear and retaliation, exemplifying how universities can too easily revert from sites of inquiry into instruments of repression,” Ali said.
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