The University of Iowa has terminated the employment of Dr. Malik Juweid, a nuclear medicine physician who has been embroiled in a personnel dispute with the university's department of radiology. Juweid's termination came after a report that detailed what investigators called a pattern of disruptive behavior at the university.
Juweid had been a tenured professor at the university since October 2000, but in late 2010 he went public with charges against a number of university officials, in particular Dr. Laurie Fajardo, who at the time was chair of the department of radiology. Juweid charged Fajardo with discriminating against him due to his Arabic background, and with hindering his career.
The university suspended Juweid in January 2011, and he, in turn, has responded with a lawsuit and discrimination complaints charging racial bias. Fajardo stepped down as department chair in October 2011, although she remains on the university faculty as a breast imaging specialist.
The 44-page report, produced by the university's Faculty Judicial Commission, was the culmination of the university's administrative process for seeking Juweid's termination. In particular, the university charged Juweid with "an escalating pattern of behavior" that included sending "harassing" emails to individuals both inside and outside of the university.
In one instance cited in the report, beginning in 2007, Juweid allegedly began an email exchange with a scientist with the U.S. National Institutes of Health that "described the recipient as 'a pathetic creature and that is from your Zionists friends in Chicago,' " according to the report. In other emails, Juweid compared University of Iowa officials to Nazi war criminals.
The report states that although Juweid was warned not to use inflammatory rhetoric in communications to colleagues inside or outside of the university, Juweid continued with emails to university personnel that investigators characterized as not only "unprofessional and intemperate," but illustrative of a larger pattern of "Juweid transforming what may have been a legitimate work-related dispute into a personal attack."
In particular, the report cited Juweid's dispute with Fajardo, who at the time was head of the department of radiology. Juweid raised concerns about Fajardo in ways that were inappropriate, and he was responsible for "gratuitous interjection of ethnicity and ethnic relationships into what are ostensibly work-related matters," the report states.
As Juweid's dispute with Fajardo escalated, Juweid continued to send emails to university personnel that many found threatening and intimidating, according to the report. The emails also contravened the terms of the university's suspension of Juweid, the investigators wrote.
The report concludes by stating that Juweid violated a number of university policies, including personal vilification of coworkers, engaging in harassing behavior, creating a hostile workplace, and interfering with the work of others. Juweid should be dismissed from his tenured faculty position in the radiology department, and his employment at the university should be terminated immediately, the report states. In a letter dated August 21, University of Iowa President Sally Mason stated that she agreed with the recommendation.
In response to news of his termination, Juweid noted that he is only the second tenured professor at the University of Iowa to be terminated in recent memory, and the other professor also was Arab-American.
"The prejudice of Iowans against Arab- and Muslim-Americans is so obvious," said Juweid, who is now a visiting professor of radiology at University Hospital Aachen in Germany. "Iowans should direct their anger at those U.S. administrators supporting terrorists everywhere, including now in Syria, rather than at culturally different Arab-American professors who contributed something to the U.S."
