Founding director of USC Computer Science Games program sued for sexual harassment
A viral video exposed professor emeritus Michael Zyda following escorts on X.
By SASHA RYU
Content warning: This article includes references to suicide and sexual harassment.
Michael Zyda, the founding director of USC’s Computer Science Games Program, came under fire Feb. 1 after a viral video exposed the professor emeritus for liking pornography and following “sugar babies for hire” on the now-deleted account on X, formerly known as Twitter, that he used for work. The video, which had garnered more than 492,000 views at the time of publication, also uncovered an ongoing lawsuit accusing Zyda of sexual harassment and workplace discrimination.
Although Zyda interacted with sexually explicit content on his work account as far back as 2015 and the professor emeritus’s former employee — Lu Ning — filed her lawsuit against the founding director March 30, 2023, word of Zyda’s alleged misconduct didn’t spread to campus until a video game commentator named Karl Jobst posted a nearly 14-minute-long video about Zyda to his YouTube channel.
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Jobst discovered Zyda by coincidence after the professor emeritus served as an expert witness in a high-profile “Donkey Kong” speedrunner’s court case that Jobst happened to be covering for his channel. When Jobst began a background check on Zyda to verify his qualifications, he found a small X account with the handle @MichaelZyda, using Zyda’s name and photos. The account owner was attempting to solicit a sugar baby for a $5,000 weekly allowance with “no sex or any [sexual] activity” expected in return.
Although it is still unclear whether the @MichaelZyda account belongs to the professor emeritus, because Zyda’s likes on his professional X account date back nearly a decade, Jobst said he didn’t believe they were from a malicious hacker, but that Zyda himself was using his professional account to interact with pornography and sex workers.
Although Zyda doesn’t seem to post or interact with sexual content on his public Facebook and Instagram accounts, he posted videos of himself staring into his neighbors’ apartments and recording women exercising at night through their windows.
Jobst’s investigation into Zyda’s activity on social media led him to find the lawsuit in which Ning accused Zyda of trapping her in his home for more than a year, withholding her alleged salary of $5,000 a week for doing “translation work” for Zyda’s gaming company, 411 Productions DTLA, and threatening to deport her to China for refusing his sexual advances.
In the spring of 2020, when Ning said she refused to give Zyda a massage on multiple occasions, Zyda allegedly threatened to “evict her onto the street” and exposed her to “violent videos,” which distressed her to the point of attempting suicide.
Email records show that, in April 2022, Ning reported Zyda’s alleged abuse to the Office for Equity, Equal Opportunity, and Title IX. Zyda, however, did not leave the University until he retired on May 15, 2023.
Michael Zyda started USC’s Computer Science Games Program in 2005 and served as founding director until 2023. (Gina Nguyen / Daily Trojan)
When contacted for comment, Ning’s lawyer, Alex Taubes, wrote in an email to the Daily Trojan: “Mr. Zyda’s behavior in the court case, like his behavior on social media, is on full display.”
A week before he retired, Zyda filed a response to Ning’s suit, in which he denied that he ever “deceived, abused, coerced, threatened, exploited, sexually harassed, or manipulated” Ning, but confirmed that Ning stayed in Zyda’s apartment “for free as his roommate” from December 2018 to April 2020.
Zyda went on to file a counterclaim in November to sue Ning for defamation, accusing her of “intentionally [publishing] a series of false statements about” him and harming his “professional reputation as an employer and colleague.”
Zyda’s lawyer, Kevin Polansky, wrote in a statement to the Daily Trojan that Zyda “vehemently reject[ed]” Ning’s “defamatory” allegations. Polansky did not respond to the Daily Trojan’s request for comment on Jobst’s video.
The University did not respond to the Daily Trojan’s request for comment on Zyda’s behavior online, but wrote that “the university takes reports of sexual harassment and discrimination very seriously.”
