[Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”]
According to Jewish students and faculty at MIT, the place is awash in antisemitism. And its Jewish president, Sally Kornbluth, is not up to the task of dealing with the mess. More on the current morass at the Infinite Corridor on Mass Ave can be found here: “New MIT Accuser Comes Forward With Harrowing Antisemitism Allegations,” by Dion J. Pierre, Algemeiner, September 17, 2025:
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is being accused by another alleged victim of refusing, as de-facto policy, to quell antisemitic discrimination which violated rights guaranteed by Title VI of the US Civil Rights Act.
The complainant, a male researcher, came forward to join a lawsuit that the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law filed in June, which required its being amended to include him. According to court documents shared with The Algemeiner, he endured psychological torment, having been swarmed by “masked” pro-Hamas activists clamoring for the destruction of Israel and students who “interrogated” his Jewish identity, pelting him with slurs and threatening to “prevent” his reproducing to bring “more Jewish children” into the world.
While administrators received formal complaints describing in harrowing detail the severity of the bullying being perpetrated against the student, they allegedly took no action. Left to stand alone, the student resorted to concealing his Jewishness on a campus which purports to be one of the most inclusive in the country.
“Antisemitism continues to persist at MIT, ultimately allowing the abuse to escalate until a promising Israeli researcher was forced from his lab. This not only deeply impacts this individual, but an entire campus and the communities this researcher, and other like them, could help through their work over the course of their careers,” Brandeis Center founder and chairman Kenneth Marcus said in a statement. “MIT has had countless opportunities to stop this harassment and protect their Israeli and Jewish students and faculty. Instead, antisemitism has only worsened at MIT — an outcome made possible by the administration’s continued negligence.”
As previously reported, the other plaintiffs, Lior Alon and William Sussman, allege that MIT became inhospitable to Jewish students after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, as pro-Hamas activists there issued calls to “globalize the intifada,” interrupted lessons with “speeches, chants, and screams,” and discharged their bodily fluids on campus properties administered by Jews. Jewish institutions at MIT came under further attack when a pro-Hamas group circulated a “terror-map” on campus which highlighted buildings associated with Jews and Israelis and declared, “resistance is justified when people are colonized.”….
All the while, MIT’s administration allegedly refused to correct the hostile environment….
MIT’s history, since October 7, 2023, of not protecting its Jewish studens and faculty from threats and attacks, needs to receive wide publicity at trial. MIT prohibited students from flying the Israeli flag to express solidarity with the Jewish state, but allowed the Palestinian flag to be flown. MIT did nothing to sanction the sinister MIT linguistic professor Michel DeGraff, who posted on social detail false and damning details of an Israeli professor’s life, making it seem as though while serving in the IDF he — Lior Alon — had been guilty of war crimes, which led to his being stalked, even at the grocery store and at his child’s daycare center. Anti-Israel mobs who yelled and banged at the door of the MIT Israel Internship Office, trying to get in, all the while screaming that Israel was committing “genocide,” were not punished. Pro-Hamas mobs who interrupted classes taught by Israeli faculty in order to shut them down by screaming were not punished. Many dozens of antisemitic acts have been reported to the administration, but no action has been taken. Talia Khan, a Jewish student, testified before Congress about those attacks, and how she had been “traumatized” by living on a campus that was “overrun by terrorist supporters.”
MIT’s President Kornbluth has said that “antisemitism is real, and it is rising in the world. We cannot let it poison our community.’” But by her inaction she has done exactly that — “let it poison our community.” Appeals to decency, cries of anguish from Jewish students and faculty, have had no effect. Now it’s time for lawfare, to make MIT pay for its misdeeds, including its violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. And in the wake of a verdict finding for the plaintiffs, and costing MIT a pretty penny, perhaps President Kornbluth will resign. She won’t be missed.