By Jonathan Stempel
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A federal judge in Manhattan said the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art must face a lawsuit claiming it did nothing to help Jewish students who locked themselves in a library for protection from pro-Palestinian demonstrators.
U.S. District Judge John Cronan ruled on Wednesday that the private college must face claims it violated federal and New York civil rights laws by subjecting Jewish students to “severe and pervasive” antisemitic abuse that did not qualify as constitutionally protected speech.
Cronan, appointed to the bench by President Donald Trump, also said the 10 plaintiffs can seek punitive damages and an injunction to end what they called an antisemitic, anti-Israel campus environment. The judge dismissed some other claims.
Cooper Union and its lawyers did not immediately respond to request for comment. Lawyers for the students had no immediate comment.
Many U.S. colleges and universities have faced lawsuits claiming they encouraged or permitted antisemitism after Hamas fighters attacked Israel in October, 2023, precipitating an Israeli assault on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
Some have settled, including Harvard University last month and New York University last July.
Cronan ruled one week after Trump issued an executive order to push colleges to report possible antisemitic conduct by foreign students, to help authorities “prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account” any perpetrators.
Jewish students said that at the Oct. 25, 2023 Cooper Union rally, demonstrators stormed past security guards and banged loudly on the library’s doors and nearly floor-to-ceiling windows, making hateful chants and carrying antisemitic signs.
The students said school administrators did nothing during the 20-minute ordeal, and told law enforcement to back off even as the school’s president left the building through a back door.
They said Cooper Union’s fostering of a hostile educational environment violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars federal funds recipients from allowing discrimination based on race, religion and national origin.
Some demonstrators told media at the time of the protest they were not targeting individual students, and were not engaged in antisemitism.
Cooper Union argued that the demonstrators engaged in political speech protected by the First Amendment, and there was no proof it was deliberately indifferent to the harassment.
But the judge said he was “dismayed” by Cooper Union’s suggestion that the students could have hidden elsewhere or left, and that it did enough by locking the library doors.
“These events took place in 2023 – not 1943 – and Title VI places responsibility on colleges and universities to protect their Jewish students from harassment,” Cronan wrote.
“The physically threatening or humiliating conduct that the complaint alleges Jewish students in the library experienced is entirely outside the ambit of the free speech clause,” he added.
Cooper Union is located in Manhattan’s East Village, and offers degrees in art, architecture and engineering.
The case is Gartenberg et al v Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 24-02669.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Peter Graff)
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