Navarre electrical engineer alleges discrimination by SMU

[AfricanMustang]

Akel was accepted into SMU's electrical engineering Ph.D. program as a long-distance student, "meaning he attended classes and interacted with his Dallas-based professors and advisers electronically from his home in Navarre," the lawsuit said. All went well until January 2016 when Akel and his faculty adviser, Jerome Butler, met face-to-face for the first time, according to the lawsuit.

After that, "Butler repeatedly inquired into Defendant’s ethnicity and national origin in a rude, insulting, and inappropriate way that made Plaintiff feel extremely uncomfortable," and Akel's emails to Butler went unanswered, the lawsuit said. Shortly after, Butler informed Akel that his dissertation topic of the past couple of years "and which had never been questioned before, was suddenly unacceptable to Butler," the lawsuit said.

"Plaintiff was told he had failed the qualifying examination and had to start the dissertation portion of his program all over again with a new, third research topic. Dr. Butler provided Plaintiff no meaningful explanation for how or why a topic that was acceptable during the approximately fifteen months before they met face-to-face suddenly was not, or why Plaintiff was abruptly failed in this fashion."

Akel claims his complaints to "several different levels of the SMU administration" were "essentially ignored," and he soon was "forced to withdraw from SMU," the lawsuit said.

The case has been assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Margaret Catharine "Casey" Rodgers.

https://flarecord.com/stories/511494880 ... university

[DanFreibergerForHeisman]

This should be interesting.

[Bergermeister]