NEW YORK, Nov. 17, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- oday, the law firm of Walden Macht & Haran LLP served New York University and NYU Langone Health with a lawsuit in “response to the precipitous and unlawful decision to terminate” Benjamin Neel’s, MD, PhD (“Dr. Neel”) “contract to serve as the Director of the Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center (PCC) – a subdivision of NYU Langone Health (“NYULH”).”
In the weeks since the terrorist group Hamas’ October 7th attack on Israel, in which at least 1300 innocent people were killed and at least 230 were kidnapped, workplaces, schools, and other organizations have suspended or fired employees for antisemitic, pro-Hamas or egregiously anti-Israel social media posts. Dr. Neel may be the first fired for pro-Israel and anti-antisemitic re-posts on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter. Dr. Neel’s re-posts, in particular, demonstrate his disappointment with the Netanyahu government, how universities across the country have responded to Hamas’ attacks, and the drastic increase of antisemitism on campus.
NYULH deprived Dr. Neel of the expected due process in violation of his employment agreement. Dr. Neel had been told he would remain PCC director through the end of 2025. Instead, on October 31, 2023, Dr. Neel was informed that he was to be terminated from his position in response to “patient and employee complaints” received regarding the three social media posts described in the lawsuit.
Walden Macht & Haran partner, Milt Williams, said, “It is a travesty that after a stellar career fighting the battle against cancer, a long-tenured and world-renowned research scientist can be unceremoniously dumped. We believe Dr. Neel is the first person to lose their job and have their reputation besmirched for re-posting content on his private social media account that challenged those individuals who are seemingly celebrating the death of innocent people in Israel. Moreover, a careful review of Dr. Neel’s social media account would reveal that he has taken balanced positions on Israel-related issues.”
The lawsuit, filed at the Supreme Court of New York’s New York County Commercial Division, accuses NYULH of attempting to appear even-handed by firing Dr. Neel shortly after it fired another physician who had posted original content celebrating Hamas’ attack on Israel. According to the lawsuit, Dr. Neel “became a political casualty of NYULH’s effort to terminate” the physician who posted pro-Hamas content. The lawsuit asserts:
“Dr. Neel was offered up as a sacrificial lamb so that NUYLH could feign impartiality in its efforts to curb political and religious expression. Any purported pretextual ‘cause’ such as an unsupported suggestion that Dr. Neel’s posts may have a detrimental effect upon the reputation, character, or standing of NYULH is an ex-post fabrication to justify an unlawful breach.”
In fact, prior to his termination, NYULH Executive Vice President and Vice Dean for Education, Dr. Steven Abramson, indicated that Dr. Neel’s posts that NYULH’s decision was made, according to the filing, “to justify NYULH’s decision to terminate” the physician who posted pro-Hamas content and as the lawsuit states “ [Abramson] said that Dr. Neel’s posts were ‘making it hard’ to fire ‘people like’” the other physician.
To be sure, the posts NYULH seemingly found problematic were all re-posts of other people’s postings – none were original content. Per the lawsuit, “The re-posts, which Dr. Neel made as a private citizen and are in no way associated with NYU or PCC, are objectively tepid and muted compared to the thousands if not hundreds of thousands of opinions currently circulating on social media sites.” Furthermore, the re-posts expressed sentiments similar to those made publicly and privately by NYU’s chief spokesman, executives, and board members of NYULH.
Dr. Robert L Grossman MD, Dean of NYU Grossman School of Medicine and CEO of NYULH, in response to an article criticizing Stanford University for not condemning Hamas, wrote to Dr. Neel, “It’s a contest. Stanford is really a piece of [expletive], and Penn is similarly feculent.”
Dafna Bar-Sagi, PhD Executive Vice President and Vice Dean for Science, Chief Scientific Officer, in an email to Dr. Neel, described Harvard President Claudine Gray as “so dumb” because she defended the groups who issued a pro-Hamas statement blaming Israel for the Hamas terror attacks.
A joint statement from Dr. Grossman and Kenneth G. Langone, Chair of NYULH’s Board of Trustees and Overseers, perfectly captures Dr. Neel’s thinking. That statement included: “The killings and hostage-taking by the militant group Hamas are barbaric and inexcusable.” Similarly, NYU’s official position articulated by chief spokesperson John Beckman mirrors Dr. Neel’s re-posts and thoughts: “Hamas’ attack on Israel was an act of terrorism. The indiscriminate killing of civilian non-combatants and the taking of children and the elderly as hostages are repugnant acts that are not morally justified.”
Furthermore, the lawsuit accuses NYULH of discriminating against Dr. Neel’s religious views by terminating his contract because of his “private expression concerning his ethnic Jewish identity and his support for the State of Israel.”
Dr. Neel has received support from across the research and medical community.
Partner Milton Williams leads the Walden Macht & Haran team representing Dr. Neel and includes senior counsel Daniel Chirlin and associate James Meehan.
About Benjamin Neel, M.D., PhD
Dr. Benjamin Neel, MD, PhD, has served as the Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Director of the Perlmutter Cancer Center at NYU Langone Health and Professor of Medicine at NYU Grossman School of Medicine since he arrived in 2015. He previously held positions as the William B. Castle Chair of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Director of Hematology-Oncology Research and Head of the Cancer Biology Program at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, as Director of Research and Senior Scientist at Princess Margaret Cancer Center, and as Canada Research Chair and Professor of the Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Dr. Neel received his A.B. degree with distinction from Cornell University in 1977 and his PhD from Rockefeller University in 1982. He received his MD from Cornell University Medical College in 1983 before completing internship and residency training in Medicine at the former Beth Israel Hospital in Boston and postdoctoral training at Harvard University.
Neel’s research focuses on cellular signaling, particularly the biology and regulation of protein-tyrosine phosphatases (PTPs), the RAS/ERK pathway in cancer, and the biology of ovarian cancer. He is generally viewed as a co-founder of the PTP field. He has authored >260 primary papers and 38 reviews, many in leading journals including Cell, Molecular Cell, Developmental Cell, Science, Nature, Nature Medicine, and Nature Genetics, and has >60,000 citations. Eighteen students have completed PhDs in his group, and he has trained more than 60 post-doctoral fellows. He is an elected member of the American Association of Physicians, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the Royal Society of Canada (International Fellow), was the inaugural winner of the Gertrude Elion Award of the AACR and the FASEB Lifetime Phosphatase Achievement award and received the Premier of Ontario’s Summit Award, the highest scientific prize in the province.
Neel previously served as Program Chair of the Annual Meeting and Member of the Board of Directors of AACR was a Member of the Board of Directors of AACI, served full terms on two NIH study sections, and has been an ad hoc reviewer for cancer centers, program project grants, NCI-Frederick, the California Lung/Breast Cancer Research Programs, and many foundations. He served on the editorial boards of JBC, Virology, JEM, MCB, and Science Signaling, was an MCB Editor for ten years, and is currently on the editorial boards of Cancer Cell, Cancer Discovery, Molecular Cell, JEM, and JCI. He has(co-) chaired Gordon Conferences, FASEB meetings, the CSH Phosphorylation Meeting (1995-2009), the AACR Annual Meeting (2012) and Ovarian Cancer Conference (in 2015, 2021, 2023), and the CSH Cancer Meeting (2014-2022). He also co-founded Northern Biologics, Navire Pharmaceuticals, Lighthorse Therapeutics, and Aethon Therapeutics, two of which currently have drugs in clinical trials.
Contact:
Elie Jacobs
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+1 646 330 2585
Frank De Maria
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