Jewish students’ future at U.S. colleges hangs on Supreme Court
The recent annual reading in Newport, R.I., of George Washington’s letter to that community’s Hebrew Congregation in 1790 is a timely reminder of the first U.S. president’s commitment to Jewish safety.
Washington’s eloquent choice of words affirmed that “It is now no more that toleration is spoken of.” Rather, he wrote, the United States “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance” and quoted from a biblical prophecy in closing, that for “the children of the Stock of Abraham.…there shall be none to make him afraid.”
With a meteoric rise in antisemitism at American colleges today, Washington’s articulated aspirations could well hinge on whether the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) agrees to hear StandWithUs Center for Legal Justice, et al v. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The complaint alleges that immediately after the Hamas-led massacre in Israel on October 7, 2023, student protesters at MIT created a hostile environment for Jews that violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The country’s highest court is slated to review the petition next week as it considers its caseload for the upcoming term.
The District Court of Massachusetts dismissed this case, ruling that the school’s leadership was not deliberately indifferent to what the court inconceivably described as “a campus embroiled in an internecine conflict.” The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed and further concluded that “most of the conduct” in question involved “speech on a matter of public concern” that is “protected by the First Amendment.”
Already, the First Circuit decision is a template for other similar cases involving antisemitism. But the repercussions are potentially enormous beyond the Jewish community.
“If there is an exception that says political speech cannot contribute to a hostile environment for purposes of Title VI, then what minority group does the law protect?” said Carly Gammill, director of legal policy and litigation at StandWithUs Saidoff Law. “Almost any discriminatory rhetoric could be spun as political expression on a matter of public concern when couched in the ‘right’ terms.”
The First Circuit also ruled the plaintiffs failed to assert that the protesters’ intent was antisemitic instead of “time-worn” attention-grabbers for their “political views.” That requirement creates an impossibly high hurdle for the Jewish students to overcome, particularly when coupled with the court’s political-speech exception.
And the appellate court characterized plaintiffs’ allegations as merely “several isolated incidents of antisemitism” that don’t “plausibly show” they “were so pervasive and disruptive” that they barred “‘victim[s’] access to an educational opportunity or benefit.’”
Jewish students’ extensive experiences, however, tell a starkly different story.
According to the complaint, protesters blocked Jews’ access to public spaces and called for violence against them, chanting, “There is only one solution! Intifada revolution!” This rallying cry invokes both Hitler’s Final Solution for the mass extermination of Jews and attacks in Israel by Palestinian terrorists in the 1990s and 2000s that killed more than 1,000 innocent civilians.
Jews also were “shunned” out of study groups, says Yossi Sheffi, an MIT professor who recently wrote a book chronicling the school’s myriad antisemitic incidents. That deprived Jewish students of the “educational value” of learning to work in teams—a critical component of becoming a successful scientist, he told me, noting that shunning has continued as a form of “low-grade hostility.”
These were hardly outliers. As MIT’s first-year students entered their orientation, activists distributed literature—bearing the school’s mascot and under the banner of “Welcome to MIT”—containing a blatantly antisemitic project that catalogs Jewish organizations with its stated goal to “dismantle them.” Protesters also disrupted classes with statements vilifying Israel and defaced Israeli flags with red handprints, a nod to the infamous 2000 lynching of two Israelis who accidentally entered Palestinian-controlled Ramallah and whose killer waved his blood-soaked hands to a cheering crowd.
And barely a month after the Oct. 7 atrocities, on the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht, a mob took over the school’s main entrance for an entire day in defiance of campus rules. Among the many thunderous chants Jews then said they found threatening was “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) classifies as antisemitic. Hamas leaders have confirmed publicly that the slogan refers to the violent destruction of Israel, the only Jewish state.
For the overwhelming majority of Jews, their connection to Israel is not a political belief, but an intertwined part of their core identity, reflective of a continuous Jewish presence in the land of Israel for more than 3,000 years and its deep roots in ancient Jewish text, prayer, and ritual practice. Age-old efforts to portray Jews as uniquely evil and worthy of extinction now often are cloaked in the trendy language of anti-Zionism.
MIT’s SCOTUS brief nevertheless argues that “adopting petitioners’ vision of Title VI would jeopardize free speech on university campuses.” That frame drove leadership’s narrative, such as when protesters erected an encampment in violation of MIT’s rules just steps from MIT Hillel, a hub of Jewish life. The encampment, which stood for nearly three weeks, became an epicenter of anti-Israel and antisemitic activism, a magnet for outside agitators by MIT’s telling, and forced a Passover seder off campus due to safety concerns.
But instead of the encampment being an immediately punishable act, it became a negotiating tool. Leadership responded to an alarmed Jewish student that it was “working to move in a constructive direction with those who are protesting” and asked for “patience and understanding as we do this hard work.”
It is difficult to imagine this reaction involving other vulnerable minorities, who are given agency to define their own identity and what constitutes discrimination. Not so with Jews.
The appellate court stated that “…little of what occurred can be deemed antisemitic merely because plaintiffs declare it to be so…” It also rejected the students’ claims that protesters called for the genocide of Jews with chants of “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and “intifada revolution.”
It is noteworthy that even First Circuit Judge Joshua D. Dunlap, who voted to deny a rehearing of the appeal, challenged the court’s glaring lack of context in its interpretation.
“…I find it at least plausible that, when made in the immediate aftermath of ‘the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust in a manner that reasonably appears to celebrate and glorify that same violence,’ such phrases support an ‘inference of animus towards Jews,’” he wrote, noting that “the panel may have missed the forest for the trees.”
That context is key for the Jewish students, many of whom already carry the intergenerational trauma of family members’ persecution and murder tied to their faith—including under the guise of anti-Zionism. Judge Dunlap’s acknowledgment underscores an important life lesson my parents, Holocaust survivors, imparted: When people say they want you dead, believe them.
Students these days have reason to be concerned. According to just released survey data from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and College Pulse, 30 percent of students say using violence to stop someone from speaking on campus is acceptable, at least in rare cases, with 20 percent of MIT students saying so.
The consequences for MIT’s Jews are incalculable. Some left the school citing an intolerable climate, students have told me, halting pioneering research. Remaining Jews carry a heavier load in sustaining and advocating for their community, a burden pushing some to hide their identity—surely a far cry from George Washington’s vision for American Jews. Students’ best hope is that SCOTUS will provide a necessary corrective.
