A federal judge last week did not reinstate an Iranian-born ex-professor to the University of Toledo in Ohio after the former faculty member sued the university on multiple counts of discrimination.
Judge Jeffrey Helmick in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, western division, dismissed all of the plaintiff’s claims on Sept. 30 except for his Title VII claim against the university, which makes it illegal for an employer to discriminate on the basis of race or other factors, and his Age Discrimination in Employment Act claim against his employers for alleged age discrimination.
The plaintiff, Ishmael Parsai, was born in Iran, but emigrated to the United States in 1976 and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1988, according to court filings. He worked at the university for 29 years before he was fired in September 2022.
Parsai sued the University of Toledo and several of its employees in November 2023 after he was fired for allegedly granting an Iranian graduate student in Iran access to some of Los Alamos National Laboratory’s software code.
Parsai was investigated by the Department of Energy’s Office of the Inspector General and “two other federal agents,” the court filing said. The focus of the investigation was his birth in Iran, Iranian graduate students admitted to the university and whether these students were “spies for the Iranian government.” The feds also asked whether the code from Los Alamos could be used to further Iran’s nuclear program.
Parsai’s claimed that his due process rights in the Fourteenth Amendment were violated, that he was discriminated against for his Iranian birth, that his firing was a breach of his employment contract and of university policies, and that he was discriminated against for his age. Parsai said a younger university staffer of Iranian descent was placed on leave and reinstated.
Parsai sought reinstatement at the university with full back pay and punitive damages.
