BOSTON — The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is facing a federal lawsuit accusing the elite university and its leaders of cultivating an environment “rife with anti-Semitism and fear.”

The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law filed the lawsuit on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts.

The 71-page complaint alleges that anti-Semitism soared on MIT’s campus after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and taking 250 hostages.

“After October 7, the campus became a hotbed of anti-Semitic hate and lawlessness, where student groups celebrated the murderous rampage of October 7, demonstrators shouted for violence against Jews worldwide, students occupied buildings and interrupted classes with hateful anti-Semitic chants,” the complaint states.

Furthermore “an individual urinated on the Hillel building, students erected an encampment in the center of campus where Israelis and Jews could not enter, students cheered for the terror group Hamas, protestors chanted ‘intifada,’” the complaint states.

Students also distributed “terror maps” promoting violence at campus locations deemed Jewish, the complaint alleges, “and professors and students alike, shunned, maligned and bullied Jews and Israelis with impunity.”

The complaint states that these incidents have caused Jewish and Israeli students at MIT “to live in fear for their personal safety, have hindered their ability to complete their academic studies” and also have “marred their ability to participate in MIT campus life.”

“Some have felt ostracized, isolated from their classmates, and unwelcome in participating in campus activities,” the complaint states. “Some have felt like they need to hide their Jewish identity and have even ceased attending Jewish-sponsored events on campus.”

Some students “have skipped classes, skipped events and activities” and “have even avoided entire sections of campus,” the complaint states.

Under federal law, MIT, which receives federal funding, is obligated to provide a safe learning environment for all students pursuant to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The Hon. Kenneth Marcus, chairman of the Brandeis Center, in a statement called the MIT case “a textbook example of neglect and indifference.”

Marcus is also a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education who ran the Office for Civil Rights, which investigates schools for civil rights violations, during two administrations.

“Not only were several anti-Semitic incidents conducted at the hands of a professor, but MIT’s administration refused to take action on every single occasion,” Marcus said. “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 – anti-Semitism and abuse,” Marcus said.

In a statement to Boston 25 on Wednesday, an MIT spokesperson refuted the allegations made in the lawsuit.

“MIT will defend itself in court regarding the allegations raised in the lawsuit. To be clear, MIT rejects antisemitism,” the MIT spokesperson said.

The school spokesperson also cited a 2023 video and transcript of MIT President Sally Kornbluth saying, “Antisemitism is real, and it is rising in the world. We cannot let it poison our community.”

The complaint alleges that in the spring of 2024, a tenured MIT professor publicly harassed and vilified an Israeli postdoctoral associate by posting images of him on social media with his name and Israeli military service.

“As a result, the postdoctoral associate was aggressively confronted by people he did not know in various locations including his child’s daycare and the grocery store,” the complaint states.

The complaint alleges that the postdoctoral associate sent an email to Kornbluth detailing the incidents and concerns for his safety and also for his family but “The President never responded. No action was taken.”

In another alleged incident, according to the complaint, the same tenured MIT professor harassed a Jewish student who had objected to the professor’s teachings in a course titled “Language and Linguistics… From the River to the Sea in Palestine.”

The professor had posted online about a Jewish “mind infection,” the complaint states.

“When a Jewish student objected to the hateful rhetoric, the professor harassed him publicly, declaring him to be a real-life example of the ‘mind infection’ in a relentless series of online posts and mass emails sent to the entire Linguistics and Philosophy Department and other distribution lists,” the complaint states.

The student, who later filed a complaint with MIT’s Institute Discrimination and Harassment Response Office, eventually left the university because of the school’s inaction and continued harassment, the lawsuit states.

White & Case is co-counsel on the lawsuit filed against MIT on Wednesday.

In January, in response to a Brandeis Center lawsuit, Harvard University agreed to take significant measures to address anti-Semitism on its campus.

As part of the agreement, Harvard will apply the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism with its examples to the university’s non-discrimination and anti-bullying policies. The school also agreed to recognize Zionism as part of Jewish identity and state that targeting Jews and Zionists constitutes a violation of school rules.

Harvard will prepare a public annual report for the next five years that covers the school’s response to discrimination or harassment based on Title VI-protected traits, to catalog Harvard’s response to complaints based on allegations of anti-Semitism.

Other schools have also settled recent complaints with similar action.

In March, the Department of Education launched investigations into Brandeis Center complaints alleging anti-Semitism against the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, American University, Yale University, Scripps College, and the Fulton County School District.

In March 2024, two Jewish students filed a federal lawsuit against MIT accusing the university of allowing antisemitism on campus that resulted in them being intimidated, harassed and assaulted, the Associated Press reported.

Months later, in August 2024, a judge dismissed that lawsuit.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.

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