Federal judge allows anti-Semitism lawsuit against Carnegie Mellon University to move forward
A federal judge ruled that a lawsuit accusing Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) of failing to address anti-Semitic discrimination can proceed.
The allegations include a professor’s discriminatory behavior toward a Jewish student and CMU’s deliberate indifference to the situation.
Judge Scott Hardy recently issued an opinion allowing a lawsuit against Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), which alleges that the school failed to respond to anti-Semitism, to proceed.
The original suit was filed by former CMU student Yael Canaan in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania on Dec. 13, 2023. Almost exactly a year later, on Dec. 17, 2024, Judge Hardy released his opinion allowing it to continue.
Judge Hardy determined that Canaan’s allegations of unchecked discrimination against Jewish individuals at CMU are plausible.
“A careful examination of Ms. Canaan’s Complaint reveals numerous factual averments that plausibly show that CMU intentionally discriminated against her through its deliberate indifference because she is Jewish and of Israeli descent,” Hardy wrote.
Specifically, Hardy granted credence to Canaan’s allegations that her professor, Mary-Lou Arscott, presented her with “roadblocks” rather than allowing Canaan, who is Jewish, to focus on her class project.
“Ms. Canaan’s averments plausibly show that she was met with roadblocks time and again after her encounter with Professor Arscott on May 5, 2022, when Professor Arscott told Ms. Canaan that she should have focused on exploring ‘what Jews do to make themselves such a hated group’ instead of working on her semester-long architecture studio class project,” Hardy wrote in his Dec. 17 opinion.
“The same professor later emailed Canaan a link to a violently antisemitic blog, even brazenly cc’ing CMU’s Chief Diversity Officer and the Vice Provost of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion,” Canaan’s initial lawsuit asserted.
In June, CMU came under fire for hosting “one of the first African American, queer, female rabbis” for a keynote presentation.
The rabbi, Sandra Lawson, presented a lecture entitled “Black, Jewish & Queer: Building Bridges Across Identities & Communities” on June 11.
“For Reconstructionists, God is understood, not as something (or someone) to be ‘believed in,’ but rather to be experienced in the everyday blessings of our lives and to be made manifest through our own loving and righteous actions,” states Reconstructing Judaism, a group that Lawson is a part of, on its website.
More recently, a professor at CMU asserted that the attempted assassination of Donald Trump might have been staged.
“People dying doesn’t make the attack any less staged,” CMU professor Uju Anya tweeted. “Someone who thought the attack was real could’ve killed others trying to prevent harm. Also, someone could’ve shot the shooter to hide the plot.”
Campus Reform has contacted Carnegie Mellon University and Yael Canaan for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
