A New York City college’s motion to dismiss a civil rights lawsuit over its  mishandling of antisemitism was shot down by a federal judge who criticized the school for directing its Jewish students to “hide themselves away in a proverbial attic” in the face of an “unruly mob” calling for violence against Jews. 

Judge John Cronan, in his ruling on Wednesday, expressed that he was “dismayed” by Cooper Union’s suggestion that Jewish students facing a rowdy anti-Israel protest in October of 2023 should have hidden upstairs, left the building, or locked themselves in the campus library.

“These events took place in 2023 — not 1943 — and Title VI places responsibility on colleges and universities to protect their Jewish students from harassment, not on those students to hide themselves away in a proverbial attic or attempt to escape from a place they have a right to be,” Judge Cronan wrote. 

Judge Cronan further rejected the college’s argument that the plaintiffs’ — led by student Rebecca Gartenberg — hostile environment claims are based on conduct by anti-Israel student activists that is protected under free speech laws. 

 “While Cooper Union is correct that the First Amendment imposes significant limits on the ways in which the court can rely on many of the alleged acts of harassment detailed in Gartenberg’s complaint, Gartenberg nevertheless alleges sufficient facts to establish an actionably based on instances of harassment that are not constitutionally protected in this context,” Judge Cronan wrote. 

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits federal funds recipients from discriminating on the basis of “race, color, or national origin.” The protection was clarified in 2004 to include religious groups, including Jews. Since October 7, 2023, the law has served as the legal basis for dozens of lawsuits filed by Jewish students against their universities. 

This lawsuit, filed in April by a cohort of Jewish students, accuses the New York-based college of exhibiting “callous and deliberate indifference to the suffering of the Jewish community” in the wake of Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel. The plaintiffs claim that the school violated federal and New York state civil rights laws by failing to “take measures to ensure that its Jewish students who identify with Israel, including Plaintiffs, would not be targeted, threatened, or harassed.” 

It was not long after the October 7 massacre that anti-Israel student activists at Cooper Union began to stage demonstrations against the Jewish state. These students, “emboldened” by the college’s “inadequate response to the Hamas attack,” began to organize increasingly hateful demonstrations, the complaint alleges. 

The protests came to a head on October 25, 2023 when anti-Israel student activists held a walkout that turned into what the plaintiffs call “a hateful demonstration that went unchecked by the School.” The participants, many of whom were masked, chanted slogans widely recognized as calls for violence against Israelis and the Jewish people, like “globalize the intifada from New York to Gaza,” and “there is only one solution: intifada revolution.” The latter is understood as a reference to Hitler’s “final solution.”

The rally soon “devolved into an unruly mob” that eventually stormed a Cooper Union building housing senior administrators and the school library, the plaintiffs note. A group of visibly Orthodox Jewish students who had gathered in the library to avoid the demonstration soon found themselves “trapped inside” as the mob “attempted to enter, rattling the library doors and then pounding on the floor-to-ceiling windows.” 

“Shocked and panicked, Plaintiffs, some in tears, called the police and texted loved ones, seeking help,” the complaint alleges. A senior undergraduate student at Cooper Union told the New York Post that her heart “started pounding” when the protesters “started banging on the door” and she eventually started crying. “I think if the doors weren’t locked — I don’t know what would have happened,” she said. 

It later came out that officers from the New York Police Department were called to the scene and offered to enter the building to intervene, but the president of Cooper Union, Laura Sparks, told them to stand down. During the incident, Ms. Sparks reportedly locked herself in her office and then ducked out of the building through a back door. Following the protest, the NYPD Chief of Patrol brushed off the claim that the force should have made arrests, citing that there were no “direct threats.” 

Despite the fact that the school issued statements “aimed at downplaying the severity of the incident,” the complaint notes, Ms. Sparks stationed a security guard outside of her office for the remainder of the semester. 

With Judge Cronan’s ruling, the plaintiffs can seek punitive damages and an injunction against the school’s anti-Israel and antisemitic campus environment.