All for Wearing a Hijab

Inside Higher Ed
July 2, 2009

Slma Shelbayah always wanted to be a Middle East television analyst. Now the former Georgia State University doctoral student and visiting instructor at the university's Middle East Institute is finding herself in the media for a different reason -- discrimination against her because of her Middle Eastern background.Georgia State University is coming under scrutiny after the head of its Middle East Institute stepped down Wednesday, asserting in an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint that both she and Shelbayah had been mistreated after an incident of racism. Dona Stewart, who is also a tenured professor of geography, alleges that after Shelbayah was harassed by a professor for wearing a traditional Islamic hijab, they were both subjected to a bout of hostile actions by the university. The EEOC is currently evaluating separate but related complaints filed in by Shelbayah in November and Stewart in January."As professors, we are in powerful positions," said Stewart, who has been tenured since 2002 and worked at Georgia State since 1996. "We have an obligation not to abuse power, and in this case the professor clearly did that. I am simply not willing to sit by and watch this happen, and I'm shocked that our institution is willing to do so."The chain of events began last August after Mary Stuckey, a professor of communications and graduate director for the department, was said to have made discriminatory comments about Shelbayah. Stuckey allegedly asked Shelbayah whether she had bombs underneath her hijab and made other references to her carrying bombs. After the incident, and another case where Stuckey made similar racist remarks, Shelbayah filed a grievance within the university, aided by Stewart. After going through the formal complaint process, Shelbayah believed that the issue had been worked out between her and Stuckey.She wrote in a September 7 e-mail to the communications department chair, which was included in Stewart's EEOC complaint, that "I want you to know that this incident has touched me personally on several levels, but in the end of it all, I feel that it has left me with more positive than negative! I feel that I've grown and developed through it all! I also want to say that Dr. Stuckey and I both feel that it has only brought us to a better understanding of each other and has also strengthened our relationship and connection with one another."A day later, the associate dean of Georgia State's College of Arts and Sciences informed Shelbayah that she could not remain a visiting instructor while also being a graduate student in the department of communications. Though she had been admitted into the Ph.D. program with the university's full endorsement that she would also be a visiting instructor -- and her previous office-mate had done both as well -- she was told that unwritten policies disallowed such a practice, Shelbayah said.

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