Today the City formally rejected an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission panel's finding of discrimination against former Arabic-English school principal Debbie Almontaser. The founder and principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy in Brooklyn was asked to step down after making remarks about the word "intifada," but a lawyer for the city called the EEOC's determination "totally unfounded." According to the AP the city claims she resigned voluntarily. Still, The News reports that Almontaser supporters are urging the Justice Department to sue, based on the EEOC's determination that "race, religion, and national origin," motivated her ousting. more ›

Just days after the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission decided the Education Department discriminated when it forced the ex-principal of an English-Arabic academy to resign, another school head has stepped down. Meanwhile, the school's founder and former principal Debbie Almontaser spoke with NY1 (video here) telling the station it shook her to the core "that people I worked with and trusted were easily influenced with right wing propaganda, and for them to second guess and have a knee jerk reaction was quite devastating." more ›

A federal panel says the Department of Education discriminated against the principal of a Brooklyn dual-language school by forcing her to resign, when critics accused the institution of indoctrinating students into service for jihad. According to the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission the DOE “succumbed to the very bias that creation of the school was intended to dispel and a small segment of the public succeeded in imposing its prejudices on D.O.E. as an employer.” more ›

The T-shirt worn by Jet Blue passenger Raed Jarrar at JFK back in August 2006 sported the slogan of famous anti-Nazi group The White Rose, but the phrase "We Will Not Be Silent" was also written in Arabic, and that freaked everybody out. Well, not everybody, but one TSA official at JFK that day did inform Jarrar that his choice of T-shirt was akin to "wearing a T-shirt at a bank stating, 'I'm a robber.'" They made him put on another shirt before being allowed on the plane, and then seated him all the way in the back. Well, now it's payback time for Jarrar; according to the ACLU, the TSA and JetBlue agreed to settle his lawsuit for $240,000. In a statement, he says he hopes officials "will think twice before practicing illegal discrimination." more ›