The statement added that Nativ will be invited to teach the course she was denied, a major victory for the professor.By Dion J. Pierre, The AlgemeinerThe University of California, Berkeley, has agreed to pay a five-figure sum to settle claims that it unlawfully denied a teaching position to a dance instructor because she is Israeli, both the victim’s legal counsel, provided by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, and the school announced on Wednesday.As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Dr. Yael Nativ, who taught in UC Berkeley’s Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies as a visiting professor in 2022, was denied another appointment in the department because a hiring official allegedly believed that her employment would be unpalatable to students and faculty in the aftermath of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, amid the ensuing Gaza war.“My dept [sic] cannot host you for a class next fall,” the official allegedly told Nativ in a WhatsApp message.“Things are very hot here right now and many of our grad students are angry. I would be putting the dept and you in a terrible position if you taught here.”Berkeley’s Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination (OPHD) later initiated an investigation into Nativ’s denial after the professor wrote an opinion essay that publicly accused the school of cowardice and violations of her civil rights.OPHD determined that a “preponderance of evidence” proved Nativ’s claim, but school officials went on to ignore the professor’s requests for an apology and other remedial measures, including sending her a renewed invitation to teach dance.After nearly two years, the situation had remained unresolved, prompting Nativ to file suit and seek damages as well as the apology UC Berkeley refused to pronounce at the time.Now, just under four months after the filing of Nativ’s complaint, the two parties have reached an amiable settlement and disclosed its terms in a joint statement.“As part of the settlement, UC Berkeley has agreed to continue to strictly enforce the University of California’s Anti-Discrimination Policy and ‘respond promptly and equitably to reports’ of prohibited conduct as defined in that policy,” the statement said.“Dr. Nativ will receive a personal apology from UC Berkeley’s Chancellor Rich Lyons and monetary damages in the amount of $60,000, a portion of which she has decided to donate to a charitable organization.”The statement added that Nativ will be invited to teach the course she was denied, a major victory for the professor and a positive, if unusual, act of reconciliation between an employer and employee who were only recently contesting claims of discrimination in civil court.“The excellence of Dr. Nativ’s teaching was never in question, and UC Berkeley appreciates Dr. Nativ’s willingness to teach the course despite the discrimination that OPHD found to have occurred,” the statement added.In her own statement, Nativ said, “Incidents of discrimination of any kind must have no place within environments dedicated to learning and the free exchange of ideas. It is my hope that this outcome contributes to strengthening these commitments for all scholars and students.”UC Berkeley was the site of one of the most shocking antisemitic incidents in recent memory in the months that followed the Hamas-led Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, as previously reported by The Algemeiner.In February 2024, a mob of hundreds of pro-Palestinian students and non-students shut down an event at UC Berkeley featuring an Israeli soldier, forcing Jewish students to flee to a secret safe room as the protesters overwhelmed campus police.Footage of the incident showed a frenzied mass of anti-Zionist agitators banging on the doors of Zellerbach Hall while an event featuring Israeli reservist Ran Bar-Yoshafat—who visited the university to discuss his military service during Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion—took place inside.The mob then stormed the building—breaking glass windows in the process, according to reports in the Daily Wire—and precipitated school officials’ decision to evacuate the area.During the infiltration of Zellerbach, one of the mob—which was recruited by Bears for Palestine, which had earlier proclaimed its intention to cancel the event—spit on a Jewish student and called him a “Jew,” pejoratively.“You know what I was screamed at? ‘Jew, you Jew, you Jew,’ literally right to my face,” the student who was attacked said to a friend. “Some woman—then she spit at me.”Shaya Keyvanfar, a student, told The Algemeiner that her sister was spit on and that the incident was unlike any she had ever witnessed.“Once the doors were closed, the protesters somehow found a side door and pushed it open, and a few of them managed to get in, and once they did, they tried to open the door for the rest of them,” Keyvanfar said.“It was really scary. They were pounding on the windows outside—they broke one—they spit at my sister and others. They called someone a dirty Jew. It was eerie.”In July, the chancellor of UC Berkeley described a professor who cheered Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities as a “fine scholar” during a congressional hearing held at Capitol Hill.Richard K. Lyons, who assumed the chancellorship in July 2024, issued the unmitigated praise while being questioned by members of the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which summoned him and the chief administrators of two other major universities to interrogate their handling of the campus antisemitism crisis.Lyons stumbled into the statement while being questioned by Rep. Lisa McClain (R-MI), who asked the chancellor to describe the extent of his relationship and correspondence with Professor Ussama Makdisi, who tweeted in February 2024 that he “could have been one of those who broke through the siege on Oct. 7.”“What do you think the professor meant?” McClain asked Lyons, to which the chancellor responded, “I believe it was a celebration of the terrorist attack on Oct. 7.”McClain proceeded to ask if Lyons discussed the tweet with Makdisi or personally reprimanded him, prompting an exchange of remarks that concluded with Lyons saying, “He is a fine scholar.”The post UC Berkeley settles lawsuit brought by Israeli professor denied teaching position appeared first on World Israel News.