Cooper Union Must Face Lawsuit Over Its Failure to Address Pro-Hamas Protests, Court Rules

Cooper Union Must Face Lawsuit Over Its Failure to Address Pro-Hamas Protests, Court Rules

A lawsuit against Cooper Union college brought by a group of Orthodox Jewish students who were forced to shelter in the school library during pro-Hamas protests will go forward, a federal court has ruled—rejecting the school’s ridiculous claim that it was the students’ fault for being there.

The library incident at Cooper Union’s New York City campus is the focus of the students’ case, which seeks damages and an injunction against the school for violating their civil rights under state and federal law, among other claims. And it illustrates how, with the aid of the mob, “peaceful” protected speech can transform into rank, actionable harassment.

In an all-too-familiar pattern, at Cooper Union, and at colleges across the country, antisemitism exploded after Hamas’s deadly terror attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. It was frustrating to watch our once-esteemed institutions of higher learning descend into chaos while school administrators sat on their hands—which, it turns out, encouraged more antisemitism.

Cooper Union was no excepetion, the court said yesterday. Although it “had not been shy to weigh in on hot-button political topics before, it struggled to find its voice in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks.”

And so it was, on October 25, 2023, that what began as a “peaceful” anti-Israel protest, ended hours later as a mob gone mad, shoving past security guards to surround the school library where a group of visibly Jewish students sheltered inside, according to the lawsuit. The demonstrators pounded on the locked doors and glass walls through which they could eye the terrified students. They taunted them with anti-Israel slogans and demanded to be let in.

The 20-minute ordeal during which the students, some in tears, texted their loved ones and called the police, was widely broadcast on social media:

#BREAKING: Happening now: Jewish students at @cooperunion have been locked in the school library by security due to threats from pro-Hamas students.
Reportedly, a pro-Hamas protest was taking place outside; when participating students learned Jewish students were in the library;… pic.twitter.com/ptSjkJAnM1

— Israel War Room (@IsraelWarRoom) October 25, 2023

The school did nothing to protect the students from the raging mob, according to the lawsuit—unless you count the advice from the librarian to hide upstairs in a windowless room. Although NYPD officers came to the scene and offered to intervene, then-President Laura Sparks shockingly told them to stand down, the court filings say. For her own part, Sparks managed to duck out through the back door, leaving the Jewish students behind to fend for themselves until the crowd finally dispersed.

Nor did the school do anything to protect its Jewish students after the protests were over, according to the lawsuit. Dean Lisa Shay told one worried student that the demonstrations that day were “a peaceful gathering”—and that she’d be “coming to work as usual.” And despite President Sparks’s later assurances, none of the demonstrators were disciplined.

Last April, the students sued the school for abandoning them to the angry antisemites on its campus, alleging civil rights violations under Title VI and New York law. Cooper Union asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit, claiming that it targeted pure political speech protected by the First Amendment and that the Jewish students failed to make the case that the school was deliberately indifferent to their plight.

And, get this: They argued it was the Jewish students’ fault for being there in the library that day, right where the pro-Palestinian protesters could see them. After all, they could have escaped or gone into hiding.

Yesterday, New York Southern District Judge John Cronan, a Trump appointee, disagreed:

The Court is dismayed by Cooper Union’s suggestion that the Jewish students should have hidden upstairs or left the building, or that locking the library doors was enough to discharge its obligations under Title VI. These events took place in 2023—not 1943—and Title VI places responsibility on colleges and universities to protect their Jewish students from harassment, not on those students to hide themselves away in a proverbial attic or attempt to escape from a place they have a right to be. In sum, 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[.]’

The court carefully weighed the First Amendment limits on the students’ harassment claims, but the library incident, it determined, crossed the free-speech divide.

Now the students’ civil rights claims to go forward, including their request for punitive damages and a court order requiring it to actually do something to stop the vile antisemitism on its campus. The court gave Cooper Union three weeks to file its response.

And when it does, Cooper Union may want to take its cues from Harvard. As we wrote here, Trump promised he would punish schools for tolerating antisemitism, and the message wasn’t lost on the elite Ivy institution. Faced with two similar lawsuits over the mistreatment of Jewish students on its campus—and just one day after Trump took office—Harvard capitulated, agreeing to settle the case for an undisclosed amount and a commitment to crack down on antisemitism.

The barrage of executive orders the President signed to make good on his promises had only just begun that day. And now, the administration has announced it is forming a special antisemitism task force whose “first priority will be to root out anti-Semitic harassment in schools and on college campuses.”

Given all this winning Trump told us to expect, it’s hard to see why Cooper Union would continue its losing battle in front of a judge who’s already signaled his dismay at the school’s betrayal of the students it was obligated to protect.

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