In StandWithUs Center for Legal Justice v. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, (D MA, July 30, 2024), a Massachusetts federal district court dismissed a suit against MIT that alleged deliberate indifference to a hostile educational environment impacting Jewish and Israeli students in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The court said in part:
The [complaint] compellingly depicts a campus embroiled in an internecine conflict that caused Jewish and Israeli students great anguish. Plaintiffs frame MIT’s response to the conflict largely as one of inaction. But the facts alleged tell a different story. Far from sitting on its hands, MIT took steps to contain the escalating on-campus protests that, in some instances, posed a genuine threat to the welfare and safety of Jewish and Israeli students, who were at times personally victimized by the hostile demonstrators. MIT began by suspending student protestors from non-academic activities....while suspending one of the most undisciplined of the pro-Palestine student groups. These measures proved ineffective when, in April of 2024, protestors erected the Kresge lawn encampment. MIT immediately warned students of impending disciplinary action, but its threat went unheeded.... When MIT’s attempt to peacefully clear the encampment proved futile, it suspended and arrested trespassing students. In hindsight, one might envision things MIT could have done differently. Indeed, some campus administrators elsewhere ... reacted to the protests differently (and with more positive results) than MIT. But that is not the applicable standard. That MIT’s evolving and progressively punitive response largely tracked its increasing awareness of the hostility that demonstrators directed at Jewish and Israeli students shows that MIT did not react in a clearly unreasonable manner.
The court also dismissed conspiracy, negligence and breach of contract claims. Bloomberg Law reports on the decision.
