A federal court in Arizona dismissed a lawsuit brought by the Council on American Islamic Relations of Arizona seeking to prevent a Scottsdale Community College professor from continuing to teach a course on Islamic terrorism.
The dispute erupted in May, when Scottsdale Community College administrators pressured professor Nicholas Damask to issue an apology for three quiz questions in an introductory course on World Politics, which contains a module on “Islamic Terrorism,” after a student complained online that the questions were “in distaste of Islam.” The district’s administration quickly reversed course and upheld the professor’s right to academic freedom after FIRE wrote a letter to the college.
As we explained at the time:
Damask, chair of the Department of Political Science at SCC, exchanged emails with a student on April 29 about three quiz questions in an international relations course. Within a day, someone shared this student’s concern about Damask’s quiz questions online, and the questions generated negative attention on the school’s official Instagram account.
The quiz questions asked about the context in which terrorism is justified by some in the Islamic religion, where in Islamic doctrine and law terrorism is encouraged by those who justify it, and who terrorists believe they are emulating, based on the material assigned in the course.
After the college backed down, CAIR-AZ filed a lawsuit on behalf of the student, alleging that the “Islamic Terrorism” module violated the First Amendment’s Establishment and Free Exercise clauses and asking a federal court to issue an order preventing the module from being taught.
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