By Eric Striker | National Justice | April 27, 2020
Jason Mostafa Ali, a New Jersey history teacher of Egyptian descent, had his appeal in a lawsuit alleging discrimination at the hands of the principal at his school tossed out of federal court.
The dispute began in 2017, when Woodbridge High School’s Jewish principal Glenn Lottman lobbied local Superintendant Robert Zega to have him fired.
Zega and Lottman terminated Ali after he allowed students in the class to question the Holocaust and whether the Mossad aided Al Qaeda during the 9/11 terror attacks.
The students were questioning the Holocaust and the legacy of Hitler on their own. Ali only encouraged the students to engage in critical thinking without ideological input.
Public schools supposedly protect the First Amendment, yet in this case, Ali was punished for merely allowing the students to read their papers out loud.
One of the papers was based on the documentary “Adolf Hitler: The Greatest Story Never Told,” showing just how far revisionists have come in impacting the debate over the Second World War. An English teacher overheard it being discussed and informed on Ali and his students to administrators.
After being interrogated by Zega and Lottman on why he didn’t punish the students for “denying” the Holocaust, Ali affirmed the right to question everything. He was then fired.
During his trial, Ali argued that he had a First Amendment right to set his own lesson plans, and his students had a right to examine history from whatever perspective they saw having the most compelling evidence. The Judge in the case, Madeline Cox Arleo, said he did not and Lottmann had a right to fire him.
Jennifer Rich, a Jewish professor in “Genocide Studies,” was called in to provide expert testimony in the case. She lauded the suppression of ideas she doesn’t like and condemned Ali in an op-ed for the liberal clickfarm Raw Story.
Ali also alleges that Principal Lottman would constantly make discriminatory remarks, like referring to him as a terrorist and “that Egyptian.” Ali put extra emphasis on this part of his case when moving to the appellate court.
Appeals to the Civil Rights Act in politically sensitive cases tends to do better in lower courts than invoking the actual Constitution, but the US Court of Appeals’ 3rd Circuit decided not to give his case any more oxygen. This is yet another blow to free speech.
While this story is being widely reported, neither conservative “free speech” advocates or the ACLU appear to have any problem with this attack on the First Amendment.