NEW YORK Amra Sabic-El-Rayess is a genocide survivor, born and raised in Bosnia, where at least 100,000 people were killed. She was a teen when she lived under complete military siege, unable to go to school under the threat of bombs.

Bosnian Serb forces systematically executed as many as 8,000 Bosnian Muslim males in Srebrenica the largest massacre in Europe since the Holocaust. Women and girls were systematically gang-raped and assaulted. Every day, civilians were tortured, starved and murdered.

In 1995, Sabic-El-Rayess received a scholarship to emigrate to the U.S. She graduated from Brown University and became the first Muslim president of the universitys alumni association in its 258-year history.

She earned her Ph.D. in Comparative and International Education at Columbia University and shortly thereafter joined as a lecturer for the universitys Teachers College. Since then, she has traveled the world to deliver presentations and talks on hate prevention and education. In 2021, President Joe Biden penned a letter to Sabic-El Rayess, telling her he was inspired by her bravery and strength and that she embodied the very idea of America after reading her memoir.

However, she believes it was not enough for the department heads at Columbia. In a lawsuit filed in federal court last month, Sabic-El-Rayess alleged that she was repeatedly denied the opportunity to become a tenured professor at the universitys Teachers College because of both her Muslim religion and her age.

I survived the Bosnian genocide. I know what hate feels like. I know where hate can take a society. The one love that I had from America was that I wouldnt be seen as someone who is the other, she told HuffPost. I was reminded that I was the other.

A spokesperson for Columbia denied the claims raised in her lawsuit in a statement to HuffPost this week.

Dr. Amra Sabic-El-Rayess is a valued member of our TC community. We reject the claims made in Dr. Sabic-El-Rayesss lawsuit and deny the allegations of discrimination. We will present our case in a court of law, a spokesperson for Teachers College, Columbia, told HuffPost in an email.