Oberlin College has suspended a long-controversial professor who called for the elimination of Israel after sexual harassment allegations against him came to light.
The private Ohio liberal arts college just outside of Cleveland has put tenured professor Mohammad Jafar Mahallati on indefinite administrative leave and scrubbed him from the school’s website.
“Professor Mahallati was placed on indefinite administrative leave on November 28,” an Oberlin spokeswoman confirmed to Fox News.
Mahallati taught religion as well as Middle East and North Africa studies and has previously called himself a “professor of peace.”
However, Mahallati is accused of supporting the Palestinian terror group Hamas, giving students credit for writing anti-Israel blogs, and telling his classes in 2016 that “Israel is a colonialist state” and “Israel is an apartheid state.”
Oberlin made the call to suspend Mahallati after decades-old allegations that he once demanded sex in exchange for good grades surfaced.
Court papers from the 1990s obtained by the Middle East Forum and given to the New York Post allege that when Mahallati was an adjunct professor at Columbia University, a graduate student 11 years younger than he accused the 43-year-old married father of giving her good grades in exchange for sex.
Mahallati allegedly invited the woman to his home, supposedly to interview her for a research assistant position, but then “made repeated sexual advances” and promised good grades for sexual favors, she claimed. The two then had sexual encounters at his office as well as at his Manhattan apartment for 15 months, she alleged.
Mahallati allegedly threatened to withhold her grade if she did not stay silent, and when she did go to Columbia’s administration, he accused her of fraudulently submitting the same paper twice, the woman claimed.
The woman, a 32-year-old Palestinian Christian, sued both Mahallati and Columbia at the time, accusing the professor of trying to damage her reputation and academic career.
Mahallati denied the claims at the time in 1997 and tried to claim diplomatic immunity even though he had not been Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations since 1989.
“We take all allegations of sexual harassment and abuse extremely seriously,” a spokeswoman for Oberlin told the New York Post. “We would not hire a faculty member who we knew to have a history of sexual harassment of a student, colleague or staff member.”
Mahallati, 71, has also taught at Georgetown and Princeton.
In September, the Department of Education launched a federal anti-Semitism probe into Oberlin College over Mahallati. The investigation is examining whether Oberlin violated Title VI, which protects students from discrimination based on race or national origin.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP
The probe could result in Oberlin losing some of the millions in federal funding it receives every year — last year the school received $5 million in federal grants.
While Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Mahallati is also accused of defending the Supreme Leader of Iran’s fatwa calling for the assassination of the novelist Salman Rushdie over Rushdie’s novel, “The Satanic Verses.”
Rushdie was stabbed in 2022 by a supporter of the Iranian regime while speaking at an event in upstate New York.
Also while Iran’s ambassador, Mahallati said at the United Nations in 1989 that Palestinian-controlled land’s “occupation by Zionist usurpers is a transgression against all Muslims of the world and its liberation is therefore a great religious obligation and commitment.”
Mahallati’s classes at Oberlin were canceled in the spring. Previously, students boycotted and protested the professor’s classes, alleging that he covered up crimes against humanity in Iran in the 1980s.