Professor On Leave for Case Study That Mentions Palestinians

Officials at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago placed an art therapy professor on paid leave after a student complained that an assignment featuring a mock patient who “felt deeply affected by the violence against Palestinian civilians” violated the school’s discrimination policy.

Savneet Talwar, a tenured professor and chair of the art therapy department, has been on leave since April 20, four days after Provost Martin Berger notified her that a graduate student in her class had submitted a complaint claiming Talwar “gave an academic assignment that focused solely on the issues of a Muslim woman with strong sympathies for the Palestinian cause,” according to a letter Talwar’s lawyer, Rima Kapitan, sent school officials. The claim contradicted what Talwar said she’d heard from her dean—that an external Jewish group had contacted SAIC president Jiseon Lee Isbara with concerns about the assignment. By the time she asked the dean about the group, “she changed the story,” Talwar said.

The assignment in question asked students in Talwar’s Cultural Dimensions of Art Therapy class to submit an analysis of a provided case that demonstrated “their understanding of intersectionality as a method of analysis and how it informs the development of a thoughtful and ethical treatment plan,” according to the instructions that Talwar shared with Inside Higher Ed. Bea, the mock patient, is a 27-year-old, queer Muslim woman who was raised in the Middle East and is currently pursuing her doctorate in the United States. The assignment includes details about her personal life and her motivations for pursuing art therapy; among them are her parents’ divorce and family tensions, pressure in romantic relationships, stress brought on by the Trump administration’s actions toward immigrants, and her grief about violence against Palestinians.

Talwar first learned of the student’s complaint on April 16, when Berger canceled her class and sent her an email ordering a meeting the following day at 8:30 a.m. Talwar wrote back, asking for “specific reasons for designating this meeting as urgent,” as well as the rationale for canceling the class, according to the email thread shared with Inside Higher Ed. Berger insisted the meeting was not optional and that he had “serious concerns about [Talwar’s] professional judgment,” according to the emails.

After further back-and-forth, Talwar, Kapitan, Berger, graduate dean Delinda Collier and SAIC legal counsel Leslie Darling held a meeting on April 20. Afterward, Berger sent Talwar a summary of the meeting, which she shared with Inside Higher Ed. It said that Talwar was put on temporary paid leave “because of concerns that your alleged actions threaten immediate harm to the student or to others within our community. This means that you are temporarily relieved of all your faculty duties,” Berger wrote.

If “immediate harm to the faculty member or others is threatened” is the only instance in which the American Association of University Professors recommends removing a professor from the classroom during an investigation, according to the AAUP’s Recommended Institutional Regulations on Academic Freedom and Tenure.

The provost also told Talwar she could not talk about the matter with any students or colleagues.

Shortly after making the complaint, the student had emailed her to ask for a different case study; Talwar passed the email along to Berger and asked that the student be offered an alternative. Berger told Talwar not to respond to the student and that his office would handle it internally, she said. Ultimately, all students in Talwar’s class were given an alternative case study about a Black queer woman navigating disabilities, she said.

Talwar’s lawyer, Kapitan, sent a letter to SAIC general counsel Darling on April 20 requesting the student’s complaint be immediately dismissed “on the basis that it not only fails to allege a violation of SAIC’s discrimination and harassment policy but is itself discriminatory on its face.”

“Are SAIC faculty expected to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their course materials? Are Arab Muslims unworthy of their own case studies?” Kapitan wrote. “If a white supremacist student filed a discrimination complaint with the University alleging that he was triggered by a case study about a Black client [who] was struggling with police violence against Black people, would SAIC proceed with an investigation against the professor who drafted the assignment?”

A spokesperson for SAIC declined to answer Inside Higher Ed’s questions about the case, citing the school’s policy not to comment on specific personnel matters or ongoing investigations.

“Our institution has a steadfast commitment to academic freedom. We do not discipline faculty for protected classroom discussion of national, religious, racial, or cultural topics,” the spokesperson wrote in an email. “We are deeply committed to learning environments in which ideas are freely exchanged and students and faculty are welcomed, respected, and valued. When complaints arise, we investigate them thoroughly through established policies and procedures to ensure fairness and privacy for all involved.”

‘An Appalling Violation’

SAIC officials have received and investigated multiple complaints of alleged antisemitism in the art therapy department from the same student, The Guardian reported. In his summary of the April 20 meeting, Berger referred to “multiple, prior complaints alleging the creation of a hostile environment within your department,” adding that the school had undertaken “mandatory anti-bias training and other measures to address the climate.” But the most recent complaint is the first that references Talwar’s conduct, Berger wrote.

After The Guardian wrote about Talwar’s case on June 5, Berger emailed faculty to say the piece “did not present a full picture, and that the issue at hand concerns a personnel matter, of which we cannot share details.” He went on to say that faculty should “feel confident in teaching your subject area—even if the topic is controversial—without fear of interference, as we fully support your intellectual and creative explorations.”

Steve Macek, chair of the Illinois AAUP committee on academic freedom and tenure, said he is concerned that the school violated Talwar’s due process rights by removing her from the classroom immediately without undergoing typical disciplinary processes. The state AAUP conference is currently investigating the situation, he said.

“AAUP’s recommended institutional regulations say that an administration should almost never remove a faculty member from a classroom,” Macek said. “The cited basis for removing Professor Talwar from the classroom is very suspect to begin with on its face, but even if it were the case that her assignment to the disgruntled student was a form of discrimination or retaliation, there are procedures in place at the school for dealing with that and they should be followed. To yank somebody out of the classroom, especially so close to the end of the semester … it’s an appalling violation.”

Talwar said that treating all kinds of patients is essential for art therapists and that SAIC’s handling of the situation sets a dangerous precedent for academic freedom at the school.

“In my practice right now as a therapist, which is a very small practice, I don’t have any clients that are not affected by what’s happening in the U.S., what’s happening in Palestine,” Talwar said. “It’s so important that students are engaging with this material in a critical manner, because we are bound by our standards of practice to not refuse services to anybody, as well as hold all of the Title VI–protected categories in mind as we are engaging with clients.”