Israeli chemist faced unrelenting antisemitism at Stanford lab, lawsuit alleges

An Israeli scientist who came to Stanford as a postdoctoral fellow is suing the university, alleging it failed to take seriously the extreme antisemitic discrimination he said he experienced while researching treatments for diabetes from April 2024 to February 2025.

The lawsuit makes 17 allegations of discrimination, retaliation, harassment, defamation, withholding pay and breach of contract. The allegations include violations of both the federal Civil Rights Act and the state Unruh Civil Rights Act.

Shay Laps, a chemist from the Haifa area, said he faced hostility “from the moment of his arrival” in April 2024 at the Stanford Diabetes Research Center, which is part of Stanford’s School of Medicine. According to the lawsuit, as the months went on Laps was subjected to attempts at intimidation by his supervisor and efforts to remove him from the lab. Despite filing multiple formal complaints at Stanford in September and forwarding his supervisor’s emails to administrators, Laps alleges that he never felt his situation was handled with the gravity it warranted. He resigned from his position in late February.

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On his first day in the research center, Laps said, he introduced himself to an assistant who allegedly responded by telling him to “never speak to her in person,” the complaint said. The assistant’s behavior went beyond social shunning, according to the complaint, and included sabotage of Laps’ research by delaying the ordering of lab equipment and materials.

According to Laps’ account, the assistant was active in the pro-Palestinian protests on Stanford’s campus during the 2023-24 school year. The complaint describes those activities in detail, arguing that the hostile environment that Laps experienced extended to the entire university, not just the medical school.

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https://jweekly.com/2025/07/10/israeli-researcher-faced-unrelenting-antisemitism-at-stanford-lawsuit-alleges/