Cooper Union agreed to address campus anti-Semitism to resolve a discrimination lawsuit brought by Jewish students who said the school failed to protect them from anti-Semitic attacks after they were trapped inside a library by a swarm of anti-Israel protesters.
The settlement, announced Thursday, requires Cooper Union to pay unspecified compensation to the plaintiffs, prohibit demonstrators from wearing masks to conceal their identities, create a Title VI coordinator to monitor cases of discrimination and harassment (including those based on anti-Zionism), and train employees and students on school policies. The college also agreed to address complaints based on Jewish or Israeli identity or ancestry "with equal care, consistency, and urgency" as any other protected group.
Cooper Union, a private college in Manhattan, is the latest to settle a lawsuit alleging anti-Semitic or anti-Israel discrimination, with elite schools like the University of California, Berkeley, University of California, Los Angeles, Harvard University, New York University, and Barnard College also entering into settlements. Others, however, are ongoing—the Brandeis Center, which represented the plaintiff in the Berkeley case, is also engaged in another lawsuit against Berkeley, alleging the "longstanding, unchecked spread of anti-Semitism" endangered Jewish students and faculty on campus.
Just weeks after Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack, anti-Israel protesters cornered 10 Jewish students inside the Cooper Union library. The agitators banged on the locked doors and the large floor-to-ceiling windows as they chanted "globalize the intifada" and demanded to be let in. The Jewish students were trapped for nearly 20 minutes—administrators never ran to their aid and the radicals escaped without punishment.
Video from the @cooperunion library now: pic.twitter.com/skOM1vWsv0
— Jake Novak (@jakejakeny) October 25, 2023
The 10 Jewish students, represented by the Lawfare Project, sued Cooper Union over the incident in April 2024. The complaint included other disturbing acts of anti-Semitism, including graffiti that used lettering that resembled the font on the cover of Mein Kampf and vandalized photos of Israeli hostages.
Cooper Union’s president at the time, Laura Sparks, resigned that August.
The Lawfare Project’s director of litigation, Ziporah Reich, celebrated Thursday’s settlement.
"Jewish students deserve to learn without being targeted, harassed, or excluded because of who they are or what they believe," she said in a statement. "Universities have a legal duty to protect them."
Cooper Union president Steven W. McLaughlin, in his own statement, said the settlement "reflects our ongoing commitment to maintaining a campus where every student in our community feels respected, safe, and included. We are dedicated to continuing our efforts to confront discrimination of any kind, including anti-Semitism, and to fostering a productive culture of curiosity and compassion."
In February, Judge John Cronan admonished Cooper Union over its attempt to dismiss the suit and its argument that the Jewish students should have hidden.
"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," Cronan wrote. "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."
The Department of Education also opened an investigation into Cooper Union over the incident under then-president Joe Biden.
