Indiana University doctoral student Sabina Ali has filed a federal lawsuit against the IU Board of Trustees, interim director of IU’s Borns Jewish Studies Program Günther Jikeli and the executive dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Rick Van Kooten, alleging First Amendment violations and breach of contract.
The suit, filed June 26 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, is backed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization.
The lawsuit asks the court to declare the defendants violated Ali's First Amendment rights and was a breach of contract; stop them from discriminating or retaliating against her in the future and award her damages.
This legal action follows two key incidents in 2025:
On Sept. 19, 2025, Ali joined a Zoom call for a faculty-student book workshop and discussion on the book “The Woman Question in Jewish Studies.”
Ali’s Zoom profile picture was a drawing of a woman wearing a keffiyeh — a traditionally significant Palestinian scarf — posed in front of a Palestinian flag with the words “Free Palestine” above.
Ali used this picture for around two years prior to the September meeting, using it to express her viewpoint that “Palestine and Palestinian people should have freedom and self-determination,” according to the suit.
Jikeli would not start the event until Ali turned on her camera or removed the picture, according to the suit. After no response from Ali and outrage from faculty, Jikeli removed Ali from the meeting, leading to 20 of the 24 in-person attendees leaving the meeting.
After the initial meeting, Jikeli emailed Jewish Studies students and faculty describing 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.”
The second incident was on Oct. 3, 2025, when Jikeli overruled a unanimous vote from the Jewish Studies faculty committee to fund Ali’s travel to present research to the American Academy of Religion annual meeting in Boston. His email gave no reason for the denial of funding, according to the lawsuit.
Ali filed a formal complaint with IU’s Office of Civil Rights Compliance about Jikeli’s actions and how they violated her civil rights, which the office denied, according to the suit. In a CAIR press release, Ali framed the case as part of a broader pattern at IU.
“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 refers to a 100-day on-campus, pro-Palestinian protest and encampment, where students and faculty demanded IU divest from Israel. She argues that the recent incidents 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.”
In the release, Ali condemned Jikeli’s actions as part of a broader effort to silence pro-Palestinian voices on campus.
“Jikeli’s disregard for democratic faculty governance and his abuse of authority—such as denying my conference travel funding as targeted punishment for my speech—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.
IU spokesperson Mark Bode said IU does not comment on litigation.
