An Ohio college reportedly placed a professor accused of antisemitism on indefinite leave after accusations resurfaced that he sexually assaulted a graduate student and offered to give her better grades in exchange for sexual favors.
Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, a professor in Oberlin College’s Religion Department, was placed on indefinite administrative leave by the college on Nov. 28, according to reports by Iran International and the New York Post.
The suspension follows revelations that Mahallati, then 43 and an adjunct professor at New York’s Columbia University, was accused in the late 1990s of making multiple sexual advances toward the 32-year-old graduate student, a Palestinian Christian woman.
Mahallati also allegedly offered to give the student improved grades in exchange for sex, then threatened to withhold the student’s grade when she reported the incident to Columbia officials in April 1997.
Mahallati and the unidentified woman settled the case in 1998. The Post claimed to have received evidence of the case from U.S. conservative think tank the Middle East Forum.
A spokesperson for the college did not confirm why Mahallati was placed on administrative leave in a statement given to the Post and Iran International.
Mahallati, Iran’s former ambassador to the United Nations from 1987 to 1989, is also at the center of an investigation by the U.S. Department of Education‘s Office for Civil Rights over allegations that he did not stop the harassment of Jewish students and called Israel “colonialist” and an “apartheid” state.
Oberlin officials have defended Mahallati and argued that “antisemitism has no place on our campus.” The college learned of the complaint on Sept. 29.
“Professor Mahallati has stated that he believes in the right of all people to exist in peace and endorses a two-state solution that would allow the people of Israel and Palestine to peacefully coexist,” a spokesperson for the college said in a statement last month.
In 2017, Mahallati was also accused by Amnesty International of denying to the UN that Iran was executing political prisoners in 1988. Estimates for the extra-judicial killings vary between 1,000 and 30,000 over the span of roughly five months.
