Muslim Biology Professor Accuses New Orleans College of Black Christian Conspiracy
Racists and supremacists tend to see bigotry everywhere. The trouble is that the media all too often panders to dubious Islamic claims of bigotry and discrimination.
A biology professor is suing Southern University at New Orleans, Chancellor Victor Ukpolo and five other administrators, charging they discriminated against him and other Muslims. Ibrahim Ekaidi alleges that the defendants conspired to hire fellow African Christians and tried to fire him in order to hide it.
Specifically, Ibrahim claims that there was a Nigerian Christian conspiracy.
He asserts there was an "unofficial institutional practice of increasing the number and ratio of Nigerian nationals" holding SUNO jobs, and that administrators had to "rid SUNO of non-Nigerian faculty who might challenge or impede the attempt."
There's just one problem.
The problems he describes started five years later, when Murty Kambhampati became chair of the Natural Sciences Department.
Kambhampati is neither African nor Christian. Still, he "immediately encouraged the departure of non-Nigerian faculty by a policy of denying committee assignments, pay raises promotion and tenure," Ekaidi's lawsuit says.
Why did a man who is neither African nor Christian do that? Who knows. It's a conspiracy.
Ukpolo has not lived in his home country of Nigeria for more than four decades. But he maintains close ties with fellow African expatriates, including a local religious and social group called the African Christian Fellowship, he said Wednesday in a previously scheduled interview unrelated to Ekaidi's suit.
In short, the basis for the conspiracy is that a man belonged to a Christian group. And the lawsuit is coming from a man who appeared to have his own issues.
In 2014, Kambhampati pushed Ekaidi and assistant professor Bashir Atteia, also Muslim, to resign for comparing notes on candidates when they served on a hiring committee, according to the lawsuit and a letter Ekaidi shared with NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune. Ekaidi says that was part of a plan to disqualify two Muslim candidates and instead hire less-qualified candidates who were part of the African Christian Fellowship.
So now we have a Muslim trying to use membership in a Christian group as proof of discrimination.