- A lawsuit has been filed against MIT alleging that the university allowed antisemitism on campus.
- The suit was filed by Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law.
- The alleged instances of Antisemitism included harassment of Jewish faculty and students, spreading hate and inciting violence against Jewish groups.
A lawsuit filed Wednesday against the Massachusetts Institute of Technology accused the school of allegedly allowing antisemitism to continue on campus.
“The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, on behalf of Jewish students, researchers and faculty, today sued the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for standing idly by as faculty and students cultivated an environment rife with antisemitism and fear,“ according to a press release from the group.
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. It also lists two specific plaintiffs, one a former student and the other an instructor at MIT, per Bloomberg.
The 71-page lawsuit described incidents including campus protests calling for violence against Jews worldwide, celebrations of the Hamas attack, Jewish and Israeli students blocked from certain areas of campus, classes interrupted with antisemitic chants, and “terror maps” showing Jewish gathering spots, according to The Washington Times.
According to JNS, the complaint says that “following the October 7 Hamas attacks, MIT became a breeding ground for hatred.”
MIT has not yet publicly commented on the lawsuit.
Lawsuit describes acts of harassment against a Jewish student and postdoctoral associate
The complaint against MIT alleges that a professor at the school publicly harassed and terrorized a Jewish student and a Jewish postdoctoral associate, per The Washington Times. It adds that the school failed to take disciplinary action against the faculty member.
The complaint identifies the professor as Michel DeGraff, who teaches linguistics and is the director of the MIT-Haiti Initiative, according to JNS.
DeGraff allegedly filmed Israelis, who were singing their country’s national anthem, and “shoved his phone” in the face of Lior Alon, the postdoctoral associate named in the suit. Alon is now an instructor at MIT.
“Soon after, Professor DeGraff posted videos on social media with Alon’s face, name and personal information, including details of his Israeli military service, tagging Al Jazeera and others — putting Alon at serious risk,” the lawsuit said, per JNS. “Professor DeGraff edited the videos, creating a false narrative vilifying Alon.”
DeGraff also published an op-ed in a French paper, in which he allegedly defamed Alon and falsely attributed statements to him, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit says that Alon emailed Sally Kornbluth, MIT’s president, about DeGraff, asking that the school require the professor to remove his social media posts, according to The Washington Times. MIT allegedly never responded nor took any disciplinary action against DeGraff.
“President Kornbluth’s silence emboldened that same professor to intensify his assault on Jews,” according to the release.
The lawsuit also alleges that DeGraff harassed Will Sussman, a doctoral student and president of the MIT Graduate Hillel, and claims that the harassment led to Sussman dropping out of his program.
“The administration was fully aware of the activity of the MIT professor, of the other acts that we talk about, and has failed to stop the conduct from occurring, that prevent it from happening again, to punish the wrongdoers, to enforce its rules,” Paul Eckles, the center’s senior litigation counsel, told JNS.
“Fundamentally it has failed to acknowledge that it has a real antisemitism problem or take appropriate actions that deal with it,” he added.
The lawsuit claims that the alleged harassment took place throughout the spring and fall of 2024.
“The very people who are tasked with protecting students are not only failing them, but are the ones attacking them. In order to eradicate hate from campuses, we must hold faculty and the university administration responsible for their participation in — and in this case, their proliferation of — antisemitism and abuse," said Hon. Kenneth L. Marcus, chairman of the Brandeis Center, according to a press release from the center.
Harvard settled a previous Brandeis Center antisemitism lawsuit
Following a previous lawsuit from the Brandeis Center, Harvard University agreed to take significant measures in addressing antisemitism on its campus, per The Washington Times.
The Brandeis Center’s press release referred to the agreement as “precedent-setting.”
“Harvard will apply the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism with its examples to its non-discrimination and anti-bullying policies, recognize the centrality of Zionism to Jewish identity, and explicitly state that targeting Jews and Zionists constitutes a violation of school rules,” per the release.
The Brandeis Center has also filed complaints with the Department of Education against UMass Amherst, DC’s American University, Yale University, Scripps College, and the Fulton County School District, according to the group’s press release.