An Emory University assistant professor has been placed on leave because of “antisemitic comments” posted to a private social media account, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
In a statement Tuesday, the private university in Atlanta said: “We condemn such comments in the strongest possible terms and have immediately placed this individual on administrative leave pending an internal investigation.”
Dr. Abeer AbouYabis, who works in Emory medical school’s department of hematology and medical oncology, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in a telephone interview she doesn’t know the exact comments that led to her being placed on leave, which she said made it difficult to respond to the situation.The university did not detail what was in the posts.
AbouYabis, who is Palestinian-American, said she has a track record of trying to build bridges and served previously in a leadership role with an Atlanta group that brings together Muslim and Jewish women and in another interfaith women’s alliance. She said she also was, until Tuesday morning, the co-vice chair of diversity, equity and inclusion in her department at the medical school and had been planning a “healing circle” event at work to give people a chance to talk about the war.
“I was just working on that … so people can understand each other and talk in a very safe place. That’s me,” she said. “And then all of a sudden, this morning, I realized that all of this has been going on while I’m actually taking care of patients.”
She said she’s never advocated or endorsed “any kind of violence.”
Said AbouYabis: “I am a doctor because I want to help people.”
The watchdog group StopAntisemitism and others have shared screenshots of posts they attribute to AbouYabis and said they were upset by the comments. In a statement, StopAntisemitism’s executive director Liora Rez commended Emory for placing the professor on leave and called on the university to fire her.
An Emory Winship Cancer Institute page with AbouYabis’ biography and other information was active until Tuesday afternoon when it was replaced with a message saying the page has moved or been deleted. She started working at Emory in 2018, according to the page.
In a statement, Emory said: “As we navigate difficult conversations, our expectation is that all members of the Emory community continue to demonstrate empathy and treat each other with dignity and respect. There is no place in our community for language and behavior based in hatred, that incites violence, and that is counter to the values that unite us as educators and health practitioners.”
Leaders at Emory’s Woodruff Health Sciences Center sent a similar message.
“We expect all members of the Emory community to treat each other with dignity and respect at all times, recognizing that each of us comes from different backgrounds and holds different beliefs,” they wrote.
Colleges across the nation and here in Georgia have reported antisemeitic incidents and other issues after Hamas militants launched an Oct. 7 attack, including a deadly assault at an Israeli music festival.
Meanwhile, Georgia Tech said campus police are investigating a weekend incident in which someone used shaving cream “to write a pro-Palestinian message” on an outside wall of a Jewish fraternity.
The school’s chapter of Alpha Epsilon Pi said in a statement that members “are profoundly disheartened to see that this conflict has allowed antisemitism to gain a foothold on our campus.” The fraternity also said it hopes the “incident can lead to a civil dialogue regarding the events in Israel and Gaza in order to reduce the vitriol that led to the defacing of our house.”
Georgia Tech President Ángel Cabrera sent a Monday message to the campus urging students to support each other.
“Every member of this community has the right to speak freely, but respectful interaction and discourse are the expectations of how our community behaves and are the standards to which we must hold ourselves and each other, without fail,” he wrote, adding that the First Amendment “does not allow for vandalism or physical assault.”
