A Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher endured anti-Semitic harassment for months until he was ultimately fired “because he is Jewish and Israeli,” according to a lawsuit against the elite university.
During the fall 2024 semester, students working alongside the Israeli postdoctoral associate, referred to in the complaint as “John Doe,” “began tormenting and shunning him based on his Jewish and Israeli identity,” and treated him “like a pariah, spewing anti-Semitic slurs and refusing to acknowledge his presence,” according to the complaint filed Wednesday.
Doe’s supervising professor never intervened. Instead, he “repeatedly vilified [Doe] in front of students for being Israeli and Jewish,” kicked him out of the lab, gave him menial tasks, and eventually terminated his contract. Doe said administrators ignored his pleas for help.
The new claims were included in an amended complaint filed by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law Wednesday morning. They build on a lawsuit the center filed in June alleging Jewish and Israeli MIT students have “experienced severe and pervasive harassment and discrimination,” which university administrators have “knowingly failed” to address. It also accused MIT of declining to investigate linguistics professor Michel DeGraff, who repeatedly harassed a Jewish student until he dropped out of school and an instructor who served in the Israel Defense Forces.
MIT spokeswoman Kimberly Allen said the university hasn’t “received the amended complaint, but MIT will vigorously defend itself in court.”
The claims add to accusations the elite research university has failed to curb campus anti-Semitism. The House Education and Workforce Committee began investigating MIT after hearing complaints that anti-Israel demonstrators urinated on the campus Hillel building, harassed Jewish students, and called for an intifada.
Doe’s supervising professor, who was kept anonymous in the suit to help protect the postdoctoral associate’s identity, brought Doe into the United States for the MIT gig in September 2023, a month before Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack. By the spring, Doe was facing anti-Semitic harassment.
In May 2024, a band of masked anti-Israel protesters stopped Doe on campus while walking to his car. “Who are you?” they shouted, pushing him against the wall. “What are you doing here?” The researcher fled and hid in an underground tunnel before eventually using an emergency exit to find an alternate route to his car.
That night, Doe described his experience in an email to MIT president Sally Kornbluth with the subject line, “I don’t feel safe anymore at MIT.” He was met with crickets, the complaint alleges. After that, Doe continued relying on the underground tunnels to get around campus, fearing for his safety.
The situation only worsened from there. A new crop of students joined Doe’s research lab in fall 2024 and quickly began harassing him for being Jewish and Israeli.
“Students spoke of creating a covert plan to destroy his relationship with his Jewish partner to prevent more Jewish babies,” made remarks like, “Zionists control the world,” and introduced him as “a postdoc from Palestine,” the suit alleges.
One student, according to the suit, “collected data on Jews and Israelis on campus,” maintained a list with their personal information, and grilled Doe about other Jews at MIT. She also asked if Doe’s wife was Jewish before adding, “Her nose looks Jewish so she is probably Jewish.”
Doe’s supervising professor, meanwhile, told the entire research group Doe was “an example of someone who cannot see the suffering of Palestinians,” according to the complaint. Doe had never discussed Palestinians or the situation in Gaza.
In November 2024, the professor announced he would be terminating Doe’s contract. He later said students had told him they couldn’t stand the presence of “his kind” in the lab and admitted it was because Doe was Jewish.
“Instead of ending the anti-Semitic harassment and eliminating the hostile environment in the lab, [the professor’s] solution was to eliminate the Jew,” the complaint alleges. He gave Doe menial tasks that kept him away from the rest of the group—tasks that were “completely unrelated to Doe’s expertise and the scientific work he had dedicated himself to for the past three years, and so far beneath the skill level of someone with his background and expertise that it was degrading and humiliating.”
Doe repeatedly appealed to university administrators for help, including from his department head, its human resources manager, and the chancellor, but those efforts “went nowhere,” according to the complaint. Kornbluth and MIT Corporation chair Mark Gorenberg also became aware of the situation, but took no action.
In fact, when his supervising professor learned of Doe’s complaints, he spread “vile falsehoods about him” and his performance, thwarting his “attempts to obtain a tenured professorship at other institutions,” the complaint alleges.
Doe was eventually offered a position in another department at a reduced salary, performing “work outside his specialty and desired career path,” the suit alleges.
In a statement, Brandeis Center chairman Kenneth L. Marcus accused MIT of allowing anti-Semitism to persist “until a promising Israeli researcher was forced from his lab.”
“MIT has had countless opportunities to stop this harassment and protect their Israeli and Jewish students and faculty,” he continued. “Instead, anti-Semitism has only worsened at MIT – an outcome made possible by the administration’s continued negligence.”
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