 During the final part of the 1880s, V. A. Urechia partook in a scandal involving Lazăr Şăineanu, a foreign-educated Jewish-Romanian linguist, during which time he made a series of antisemitic statements.Şăineanu, who, like most other members of the Jewish community, was not legally emancipated, had been assigned to a Faculty of Letters position by Titu Maiorescu, at the time Education Minister in a Conservative Party cabinet.Urechia and his partisans reacted strongly against this measure, arguing that Şăineanu was made unqualified by his ethnicity, until Şăineanu presented his resignation to Maiorescu.