A Jewish professor at Duquesne University, a private Catholic school in Pittsburgh, has been subjected to a hostile work environment and endured retaliation for reporting antisemitism on campus, according to a complaint that the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law filed to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Thursday.
“Jewish faculty, staff and students should be able to report antisemitic discrimination without fear that speaking up will jeopardize their academic or professional futures,” Deena Margolies, staff litigation attorney for the Brandeis Center, told JNS.
The complaint to the federal agency states that Alex Kranjec, an associate professor of psychology at the school, reported a graduate student, who lauded Hamas on social media on the one-year anniversary of Oct. 7. He reported another student who allegedly accused him of being “racist” for decrying Jew-hatred and anti-Zionism in the psychology department.
Kranjec reported the incidents to department leaders but alleges that he did not see appropriate reactions. (JNS sought comment from the university.)
One of the graduate students filed a complaint against Kranjec, accusing him of bullying for reporting him, according to the complaint.
The complaint also alleges that in December 2025, Kranjec expressed concern to Kristine Blair, dean of the college of liberal arts and sciences at Duquesne, that an upcoming training on Jew-hatred was not slated to address the strain of antisemitism permeating the department.
The university made no changes to the training, according to the complaint. One speakers allegedly said that the speaker didn’t agree with the view that “the oppressed group gets to decide 100% of the time what’s antisemitic and what’s not.” There were also other statements downplaying Jew-hatred, according to the complaint.
Duquesne has taken “actions that affected his teaching responsibilities, evaluative roles and professional standing” in response to Kranjec’s reports about antisemitism, the complaint alleges. That has included establishing an alternative to his physiological psychology course, which he says he was told was done to protect students from feeling “pressured” from his views that there had been Jew-hatred in the department.
Kranjec was removed from a Jewish graduate student’s comprehensive exam committee in March despite having invested ample time in the student’s studies, the complaint alleges. The university determined that Kranjec’s “bad behavior” caused some students to feel unsafe and that his views were also deemed incompatible with the student “working through questions related to Jewish identity,” according to the complaint.
“Throughout this period, Professor Kranjec’s communications raising concerns about anti-Jewish discrimination were repeatedly subjected to heightened scrutiny and characterized as ‘unprofessional,’ ‘uncivil,’ ‘provocative’ or made in ‘bad faith,’” the complaint states.
The complaint alleges that the university is violating Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the university’s anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies and urges the federal agency to investigate the allegations and shield Kranjec from any further retaliation.
