The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) faces sharp criticism in a federal anti-discrimination lawsuit after defending a professor accused of anti-Semitic harassment targeting a Jewish student. The complaint reveals that linguistics professor Michel DeGraff repeatedly targeted student William Sussman after a seminar addressing Palestine and Israel. DeGraff allegedly labeled campus Jewish groups as intent on spreading a “Zionist mind infection,” threatened to make Sussman his academic “case study,” and forced him to leave MIT due to intolerable harassment. These reports are part of an ever-growing surge of campus anti-Semitism at universities across the nation.
MIT’s Discrimination and Harassment Response Office reportedly declined to investigate, claiming DeGraff’s remarks critiqued Israeli propaganda rather than Sussman’s Jewish identity. They also refused to act on allegations by instructor Lior Alon, whom DeGraff allegedly harassed online, exposing his Israeli military service and making him a target for anonymous threats at his workplace and daycare.
The Louis D. Brandeis Center’s lawsuit argues that the university has allowed a “hotbed of anti‑Semitic hate and lawlessness” to fester—pointing to incidents like protesters urinating on Hillel and chanting for an intifada. Committee chair Kenneth L. Marcus condemned MIT’s leadership, stating, “This is a textbook example of neglect and indifference.”
MIT President Sally Kornbluth, alongside leaders from Harvard and UPenn, previously reportedly refused to confirm whether calls for “genocide of Jews” violated university policies. DeGraff has since been moved out of his department but remains on staff.
