An appellate court has upheld the termination of a college teacher of Palestinian and Lebanese descent who was accused of anti-Semitism, concluding her firing was not based on her race or national origin.

Suriya Smiley was a part-time instructor in Columbia College's radio department in Chicago from 1994 through January 2009, according to Tuesday's ruling by the 7th U.S. District Court of Appeals in Chicago in Suriya H. Smiley v. Columbia College Chicago.

Near the end of the fall 2008 semester, an unidentified student in her radio studio operations class complained to two faculty members that he felt he had been singled out in class because he is Jewish.

Among the comments she made was “I thought all Jews knew everyone” after he said he did not know a recent graduate and, after he refused to have his picture taken, “Are you too religious of a Jew to take a picture?”

Ms. Smiley denied making any of these comments, stating she had a “standard joke” with her class and, in referring to the complaining student, “I knew I hurt his feelings. It's not going to hurt a regular student.”

The college concluded after an investigation that she had violated its antidiscrimination and harassment policy and terminated her in January 2009.

Ms. Smiley filed suit, charging the company with discriminating against her on the basis of her race and national origin. The federal district court in Chicago granted the college's motion for summary judgment dismissing the case.

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The unanimous three-judge panel said contrary to Ms. Smiley’s charges, other investigations conducted by the university “do not suggest that persons outside Smiley’s class were treated more favorably or that Columbia’s reason for terminating Smiley’s employment was pre-textual.”

“Pretext does not exist if the decision-maker honestly believed the nondiscriminatory reason for its employment action,” said the appellate court. “That is because courts are not charged with determining best business practices. On this record, we conclude that Smiley has not provided sufficient evidence of pretext and that summary judgment was proper,” said the panel, in upholding the district court’s dismissal of the case.