The Muslim Law Students Association (MLSA) wrote a letter Feb. 28 to Georgetown University Law Center (GULC) administrators calling for action to address one professor’s racist and Islamophobic class conduct.
The letter — which has garnered signatures from 286 Georgetown students, almost 30 student organizations and 24 non-GULC bar associations as of March 3 — asks for increased administrative representation and curriculum changes. The letter describes discriminatory conduct toward Muslim students by Susan Deller Ross, a tenured professor who teaches courses in international and comparative law on women’s human rights and is the director of the International Women’s Human Rights Clinic.
The authors of the letter, which were a group of MLSA members, gathered information from decades of coursework in Ross’ classes, citing dozens of excerpts from the required textbook she authored and exam questions she wrote. The authors wrote that the content they gathered represents a holistic picture of Ross’ racist and Islamophobic beliefs.
The letter requests that Ross’ course curriculum be modified and reviewed by a Muslim expert, according to Hamsa Fayed (LAW ’23), a member of MLSA.
“It is quite clear from our 17-page memo and content of our statement that Prof. Ross is not able to objectively evaluate any question relating to Muslims and their practice without injecting dangerously Islamophobic rhetoric into her teachings/examinations, thus we also ask that she refrain from the use of those topics in her class lectures and examinations,” Fayed wrote to The Hoya.
MLSA’s demands include mandating anti-Islamophobia and anti-discrimination specific training for all GULC faculty, reserving a seat for an MLSA representative on the committee that appoints GULC faculty, and creating a clear and direct internal system for students to anonymously file complaints for the administration to investigate.
Past coursework that MLSA marked as promoting islamophobic rhetoric included a 2020 exam that asked students to advocate for the Hindutva Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), an extremist right-wing party responsible for mass lynchings of Muslims in India and Kashmir.
The exam question distressed and harmed many students, according to MLSA member Maheen Haq (LAW ’23).
“How do you expect someone like a Muslim person to take that exam?” Haq said in an interview with The Hoya. “Members of my family have died and you’d be expected to take this exam and advocate on behalf of a party that has done lynchings of your community.”
Ross said her coursework does not specifically target Muslim students and focuses on international and human rights law.
“My courses and casebook sections concerning discrimination against women in marriage,
divorce, and inheritance cover many statutes, whether they stem from the Catholic, Protestant,
Mormon, Jewish, Muslim, or Hindu religion or from ethnic customs or from cultural beliefs that
women should be subordinate to men,” Ross wrote to The Hoya. “I am not against any religion or ethnicity.”
Being forced to argue on behalf of Islamophobic laws and rules, as the letter states Ross encourages students to do in the clinic, could cause students to begin applying those ideas to their careers and lives, Haq said.
“This will influence your policy choices, it’s going to influence how you do so many different things,” Haq said. “For example, she asked students to advocate against the right for women to wear a hijab, and she taught students how to use international doctrines and treaties to make that argument. That’s just sick.”
Fayed felt as though she had to act against her beliefs and morals in order to perform well in Ross’ clinic, according to a video posted on the GULC MLSA instagram page.
“This all really tore me apart after a while especially since a lot of those stances were fundamentally against my belief systems and my identity as a human rights advocate,” Fayed said in the video. “I was ashamed of myself, ashamed to call myself an advocate for social justice, ashamed to be a Muslim, ashamed that I wasn’t defending myself as a proud Muslim, ashamed of what I had enabled from being silent, ashamed that I feared speaking out because I was the only one in the room that felt this way, ashamed that those fellow students would invalidate me because I was a nobody in comparison to the decorated and accomplished professor Susan Ross.”
Jinan Chehade (LAW ’23), another member of MLSA who raised concerns about Ross’ insensitive course content alongside Haq, said the administration did not provide an adequate response.
GULC prioritizes making classrooms inclusive environments with respectful dialogue, according to William Treanor, dean of GULC.
“We received the letter and have been in touch with the student leaders and individuals involved,” Treanor wrote in an email to The Hoya. “Georgetown Law is committed to ensuring an inclusive campus that welcomes students of all backgrounds.”
MLSA’s letter follows a series of student activism against racist conduct from faculty members at GULC. The GULC administration placed Ilya Shapiro, a prospective administrator, on administrative leave Jan. 31 pending investigation from the Law Center following racist and sexist tweets about President Biden’s pledge to nominate the first Black female Supreme Court justice. The decision followed a Jan. 28 statement released by the Georgetown Law Black Law Student Association (Georgetown BLSA), urging GULC to to rescind Shapiro’s job offer, commit to a more thorough hiring process, properly staff the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, ensure the representation of Black students when it comes to hiring decisions and fund an endowment to support Black GULC students.
Professor Franz Werro referred to a student Feb. 10 using an anti-Asian slur, prompting the GULC Asian Pacific American Law Students Association (APALSA) and the Georgetown China Law Society (GCLS) to urge the GULC to hold mandatory implicit bias training for professors and to discipline staff and faculty. In March 2021, Black students and faculty at GULC demanded institutional change after a viral video captured professor Sandra Sellers making racist comments about Black students in her course.
In light of recent controversies at GULC, as well as Ross’ course and clinic, some members of MLSA ask that Islam be taught within accurate and objective contexts at GULC, according to Fayed.
“We want her course curriculums to be modified to be more sensitive to POC cultures and the Islamic faith through the use of a Muslim expert to review the curriculum,” Fayed wrote.
Haq said she ultimately decided to forfeit the opportunity to learn in a clinic she is interested in because of the racism she found in Ross’ curriculum. According to Haq, she is not the only Muslim student who was hesitant to participate in Ross’ course or clinic.
Nearly 50% of Muslims living in the United States experienced some form of discrimination in the past year, including being treated with suspicion, called offensive names and singled out by law enforcement, according to 2017 data from the Pew Research Center.
MLSA’s letter also demands that Ross’ grading systems change so that personal biases cannot influence student grades, according to Fayed.
“What we are asking for is simple: removing Prof. Ross from any student evaluation position where her biases and prejudices would negatively affect POC and Muslim students,” Fayed wrote. “The non-blinding grading system does not protect POC and Muslim students at all from Prof. Ross’s inherent prejudices and racism.”
Chehade said that the Islamophobic tactics Ross uses in her curriculum would result in further discrimination if left unchecked by the university.
“It really starts here in the classroom, when we continue to be silent about these blatant forms of racism, when we continue to be passive and say, ‘This is normal,’” Chehade said.