A prominent UCLA ecologist on involuntary leave filed a lawsuit against the University earlier this month, alleging wrongful suspension, harassment and racial discrimination.

Ecology and evolutionary biology professor Priyanga Amarasekare joined UCLA in 2005, but she was suspended in July 2022 for a year with no pay by then-Chancellor Gene Block. He escalated recommendations made by an Academic Senate committee months earlier to censure Amarasekare, a widow from Sri Lanka with two children, and dock her pay.

Amarasekare told the Daily Bruin earlier this year that her punishment was retaliation for speaking out against a departmental culture of racism and that it damaged her and her students’ careers.

“Amarasekare was subjected to discriminatory, harassing and retaliatory conduct on the basis of her gender, race, color, ethnicity, ancestry and national origin,” reads the complaint, which was filed at the Los Angeles County Superior Court on Oct. 10. “Amarasekare was also retaliated against and subjected to multiple adverse actions over the course of her employment for opposing discrimination, harassment and retaliation and/or making complaints.”

[Related: Amarasekare’s circle alleges collective punishment. Critics say her claims are ‘one-sided.’]

The initial complaint does not provide many details, but controversy has surrounded the nationally acclaimed ecologist – who is one of three tenured women of color in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology – since her suspension. She gained hundreds of supporters within the international ecology community after the circumstances of her suspension were published in The Chronicle of Higher Education and the academic journal Nature in early 2023.

The lawsuit is her latest move to defend herself as ongoing proceedings accuse her of a number of policy violations, including harassment, disrupting university meetings and violation of confidentiality policies.

“UCLA does not condone discrimination, harassment or retaliation of any kind. We’re committed to maintaining a diverse, inclusive and respectful learning and working environment for all members of our community,” said UCLA spokesperson Ricardo Vazquez in an emailed statement. “We will respond to the allegations made in the filing in court, and do not have further comments on the ongoing litigation at this time.”

Amarasekare’s lawyers are seeking damages in excess of $35,000 and a trial by jury, but they declined to say whether they were open to a settlement. They allege that the defendants and dozens of other unnamed individuals helped subject her to “adverse actions” such as “suspensions, discipline, denial of promotions, pay cuts and pay decreases, being forcefully placed on administrative leave, and more.”

“She’s been an unfortunate victim of retaliation and discrimination and going through an ongoing battle with UCLA,” said Mahru Madjidi, one of Amarasekare’s attorneys. “What I would really like to see for her is to be able to go back to doing what she loves and being around the students.”

Amarasekare has exhausted all other available avenues to push back on the charges, including filing complaints with the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the California Civil Rights Department, according to the lawsuit.

The agencies have declined to investigate her charges and have given her the opportunity to file her own suit, according to the complaint. The case names five defendants including UCLA, the UC Board of Regents and three individuals: EEB Department Chair Michael Alfaro, former Dean of Life Sciences and EEB Distinguished Professor Victoria Sork, and Interim Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Michael Levine.

UCLA has already denied almost all of The Bruin’s California Public Records Act requests related to her punishment, including any complaints or investigative reports that substantiate Amarasekare’s misconduct, citing ongoing administrative processes. The university’s handling of the records, however, raises questions for legal experts, who say public institutions should release documentation explaining sanctions against public employees.

“If the university has taken that action against her, it clearly thought something went wrong,” said David Loy – an attorney and legal director for the First Amendment Coalition, a public transparency group based in California. “The public has the right to know, to see those documents and records, to decide for itself: Was that appropriate or not?”

How did her case begin?

In a January interview with the Daily Bruin, the ecologist traced the root of her punishment to statements made on a departmental listserv. It was intended to be a space for faculty and graduate students to share opinions about issues affecting the EEB community, particularly anti-Black racism, according to an opening message from the interim department chair amid racial justice protests in 2020.

On Aug. 7, 2020, Amarasekare used the forum to lay out a long list of concerns, according to emails obtained by The Bruin. She called out some members of the department by name for denying her promotions and forming a diversity, equity and inclusion committee consisting of all white members except for one, whom she labeled as “the token” Black graduate student, and a “white-skinned” Hispanic male faculty member.

The ecologist also wrote in the listserv that she was using the term “person of color” about “the amount of pigmentation in one’s skin, and not one’s ethnic origin.”

In response to Amarasekare’s comments, Sork wrote that she was “saddened” by the discourse. Without naming Amarasekare, she wrote that some comments “seem more like focused criticisms of individuals” rather than “points of view for public reflection.”

Sork, a professor in the EEB department, did not respond to requests for comment.

Many graduate students in the listserv rallied in Amarasekare’s defense, alleging UCLA and departmental leaders were attempting to silence her. But she did later admit some wrongdoing in her remarks to the listserv, apologizing to the department’s Black students for her use of the “token” comment and saying she did not intend to appropriate the moment for her own causes.

One of them wrote back to her that her concerns about the departmental culture were justified.

“The administration’s coming after me on everything,” Amarasekare previously told The Bruin. “That was basically (it) trying to establish a chain of racism by me.”

Amarasekare revealed subsequent details surrounding those actions on her personal website this summer, where she used pseudonyms, redactions and documents to describe in detail the charges leveled against her by professors, chairs and high-ranking administrators. She took the website down in late September. On the last day of that month, she was notified that her federal grant funding had been canceled, according to the complaint.

According to her website, a former dean of life sciences identified as “Professor K” filed charges against Amarasekare in November for leaking an Academic Senate disciplinary committee report to the media, alleging that Amarasekare’s actions caused “serious reputational and other harm.” From interviews with department members and UC faculty as well as context on her website, “Professor K” appears to refer to Sork.

But the impacts of her case have extended far beyond Amarasekare herself. While she was on leave, Alfaro encouraged Amarasekare’s students to leave her name off manuscripts and projects they had been developing under her supervision, students previously told The Bruin.

One student called it a “red flag” and a clear ethical violation, and Amarasekare said in January that she had been barred from speaking with her students during her punishment. Alfaro did not respond to requests for comment, but a UCLA spokesperson previously denied that a chair would ever make such a request.

A clash with the interim executive vice chancellor and provost

Amarasekare has received multiple high-profile awards in her field of study, with her recent research focusing on organisms’ responses to climate and environmental change. She told The Bruin early this year that she had planned to serve out her suspension in July 2022 and come back after it was over a year later.

However, just one week before Amarasekare’s suspension was set to end, Levine placed her on involuntary leave with a docked salary and reinstated access to health insurance, she said.

The university reasoned that she should be barred from her office because her presence on campus posed a risk to the proper functioning of the EEB department and the education of students, she said, referring to an email from Levine. Amarasekare did not return to campus until October 2023, after journalists reported on the negative impact of her absence on her students and their futures in academia.

“As students in her lab, many of us who are first-generation students, queer (and) people of color – it felt like we were being punished by her white colleagues,” a student from Amarasekare’s lab told The Bruin in February.

By the time Amarasekare was allowed back on campus, she said her movement was restricted to her lab and office floor. She said she could not recruit new students for her lab, leaving her research funding unused.

“Depriving student mentees of participating in this research is a tremendous loss to science and society,” Amarasekare said via a June post by Pedro Peres-Neto, a professor of biology at Concordia University, on the social media platform X. “Without being able to hire a postdoc or recruit students, my research has come to a standstill. … The VCAP (Levine) on the other hand has just been appointed as the interim Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost.”

Amarasekare previously told The Bruin that Levine wrote to her to explain the additional leave before she was set to return back to campus in July 2023, but she would not share a copy of the letter. According to the website, Levine wrote that she had been found to have materially interfered with the employment of a professor whom The Bruin identified as Paul Barber, another EEB professor and a previous equity advisor for the division of life sciences.

Amarasekare, however, wrote on her website that the investigation, conducted by UCLA’s Discrimination Prevention Office, actually found that she had not seriously influenced the terms of Barber’s employment.

Levine misquoted the investigation as having found her guilty of misconduct when he extended her leave in July 2023, she alleged online. She said her dispute is “a case where misinformation is propagated to destroy the careers and reputations of innocent people.”

But it is not clear where each of the defendants personally stand on Amarasekare’s case and punishment.

Alfaro, the current department chair, wrote on the listserv that he wanted to acknowledge the issues Amarasekare raised about the department’s culture.

“Academia suffers from systemic racism at all levels including our university and our department,” he said in the message. “This is true even if as individuals we are against the idea of racism and even if we have been supportive of ways to promote diversity and inclusion in our various activities.”

Amarasekare said she can not comment while university proceedings are ongoing.

Contributing reports by Anna Dai-Liu and Lex Wang, Daily Bruin senior staff.