Professor sues ex-student, colleague

A McGill University professor is suing a colleague and former student for $600,000 in response to what he calls a “smear campaign” in which the two allegedly advocated against his tenureship amid accusations of sexual misconduct.

Ahmed Fekry Ibrahim, a professor in the university’s Institute of Islamic Studies, claims his former student, Sarah Abdelshamy, and colleague, Pasha Khan, ruined his reputation and refused him his right to privacy.

The lawsuit claims that both Abdelshamy and Khan held a “vendetta” against Ibrahim with the goal of ruining “all future employment possibilities for him.”

In the document, Ibrahim continues that rumours allegedly spread by Abdelshamy and Khan made him a “pariah” in his area of study, making it so that he would “simply never be able to work in his field again.”

According to the lawsuit, details of what Ibrahim claims was a consensual relationship with a student that ended in 2015 began circulating more than a year after ward as he was up for tenure at McGill. He says information about the relationship was being shared to motivate the university to deny him the position.

Further, he claims that Abdelshamy, who was not the student in the relationship but rather a student in Ibrahim’s class in 2017, started a petition to have his tenure denied following a debate on Islamophobia that left her upset. The lawsuit also alleges that Abdelshamy accused Ibrahim of inappropriate behaviour toward students during a meeting about McGill’s new sexual violence policy that same year.

The following semester, stickers began appearing around campus warning students of Ibrahim’s alleged inappropriate behaviour toward female students, which the lawsuit claims Abdelshamy was probably behind.

Around the same period, Ibrahim learned his colleague Khan was also warning students of Ibrahim’s alleged behaviour — information he reportedly discovered after another student shared emails with him.

McGill University would neither comment on the case nor confirm whether Ibrahim has been denied tenure, as the lawsuit implies.

Ibrahim’s lawyer, Julius Grey, was also unable to comment on the specifics of the case but said, “an accusation is sufficient to destroy a career.”

He continued that everything needs to be judged on a case-bycase basis according to the law and only the law, and the focus should be on creating “an atmosphere in which these things cannot happen.”

Within the context of a university, Grey said this means a space where relationships between a professor and a student can be disclosed.

Abdelshamy’s lawyer, Audrey Boctor, warned of the negative effects a case such as this one may have in the era of #MeToo, as more individuals disclose experiences of sexual violence.

“We can’t underestimate the chilling effects that defamation lawsuits can have on people who would otherwise be compelled to speak up,” Boctor said.

While also unable to comment on specifics, Boctor said a lawsuit of this nature can be devastating for a student.

The Montreal Gazette was unable to get in touch with Khan regarding the lawsuit.

The Students’ Society of McGill University wrote that they believe Ibrahim’s characterization of events to be “deeply misleading ” in a statement released Thursday.

The student association disagreed that Ibrahim’s relationship with a student was consensual, as the university’s sexual violence policy says “a person is incapable of consenting to the activity ... where the sexual activity has been induced by conduct that constitutes an abuse of a relationship of trust, power or authority, such as the relationship between a professor and their student.”