Overview
- An arbitrator last week overturned San José State’s 2025 termination of tenured professor Sang Hea Kil and ordered that she be reinstated to her position.
- Kil filed a civil‑rights lawsuit in late May in Santa Clara County Superior Court accusing SJSU and the California State University system of retaliation, discrimination and First Amendment violations for her pro‑Palestinian protest activity.
- The dispute began after Kil attended multiple demonstrations in February 2024, prompting an SJSU investigation, administrative leave and a 2025 firing that she appealed to a Faculty Hearing Committee.
- The Faculty Hearing Committee found likely policy violations but said they did not warrant dismissal, a finding the university did not follow and that Kil’s lawyers cite as part of a pattern of unequal enforcement.
- Kil’s suit points to contrasting treatment of another professor who was accused of grabbing a student at the same event and returned to work, and the case could test how public universities balance campus discipline, academic freedom and free‑speech claims.