CHICAGO, Ill. – A lawsuit has been filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois on behalf of Louis Yoelin against Elmhurst University and James Hile for damages related to racial and religious discrimination.
According to a release, Yoelin is a practicing member of the Jewish faith and an accomplished songwriter, producer, and composer.
Throughout Yoelin’s professional career, his music has been featured in over 100 television shows, films, and commercials, according to his attorneys.
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During his eleven-year tenure at Elmhurst University, Yoelin was an Adjunct Professor of Music Theory and Composition. He received exemplary performance reviews from his superiors and was well-respected by his students.
The lawsuit filed by Yoelin claims that Elmhurst University and Music Department Chair James Hiles practiced employment discrimination based on antisemitism and infringed upon Yoelin’s rights protected by Title VI and VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
“In the summer of 2023, he was wrongfully terminated from Elmhurst University as a result of his speaking out against antisemitic hate speech,” said Yoelin’s Attorneys Marc P. Trent and Daniel P. Nikolic.
“The evidence in the case we filed today is clear: Mr. Yoelin was targeted by Elmhurst University for his beliefs and his religion. Mr. Yoelin lost his job because of what he believed in, and such acts should not be tolerated,” said the attorneys.
This is yet another case of where the law and antisemitism meet on campus.
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As the Tampa Free Press reported in January, Jewish students filed a complaint with the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, alleging that American University, in Washington, D.C., failed to address antisemitism on campus and even punished those who came forward to report the harassment.
The complaint was filed on behalf of a dozen students by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and alleges that Jewish students have been targeted by “discrimination, harassment, and intimidation” because of their “ethnic identity and Israeli national origin.”
Students reportedly have been “shunned” in the classroom, dorm doors of Jewish students were vandalized with swastikas, one student was allegedly spit on several times and posters of hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7 have been torn down repeatedly.
“The University has failed to meet its legal obligations or enforce its own rules of conduct to protect these students, which, if enforced, would make AU’s campus a safer and more welcoming environment for its Jewish and Israeli students,” the complaint reads. “Even worse, the University has chosen to further harass and discriminate against several of these students by subjecting them to a baseless disciplinary hearing for alleged harassment and disorderly conduct based on their recording acts of vandalism.”
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The complaint claims that several students, who filmed their peers tearing down posters showing Israeli hostages taken by Hamas, were subjected to disciplinary hearings in November 2023 after reporting the incidents to the school. School officials allegedly claimed that the “students tearing down hostage posters … were merely ‘removing unauthorized postings’” and charged the Jewish students with “harassment and disorderly conduct.”
The Brandeis Center disputes the claim in the complaint, arguing that only some of the posters were in an area the school considered “unauthorized” while the rest were all in “authorized locations.” They also noted that university policy states that only school staff may remove posters, not students and that students who tore down the posters in the “unauthorized” areas then replaced them with their own posters.
“This is an egregious case of anti-Semitism that has run rampant on American University’s campus. The university has failed in its legal obligation to protect its Jewish and Israeli students from discrimination and harassment and has instead chosen to retaliate and bully those students who were courageous enough to speak out,” Deena Margolies, the Brandeis Center lawyer overseeing the AU complaint, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Because the administration has been derelict in addressing the anti-Semitism on its campus, it is not surprising that the situation has only worsened and intensified following October 7, necessitating the filing of our complaint with the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Education.”
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