First Circuit Judges Strike down Israel Lobby Suit against MIT for Permitting Gaza Protests
Juan Cole 10/26/2025
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Erik Uebelacker at Courthouse News Service reports that a three-judge appeals panel of the US Court of Appeals, First Circuit, in Boston, struck down a lawsuit by a pro-Israel pressure group against the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) alleging that the university permitted pro-Palestine students to harass Jewish students.
The three judges were “U.S. Circuit Judge William Kayatta, a Barack Obama appointee, U.S. Circuit Judge Gustavo Gelpí, a Joe Biden appointee and U.S. District Judge William Smith, a George W. Bush appointee.”
The California-based Stand With US Center for Legal Justice joined two MIT students in alleging that the university’s failure to ban pro-Palestine activism constituted discrimination against Jewish students on campus that violated the federal Title VI.
In their ruling, the three judges disagreed. It is one of the more important rulings in the history of the First Amendment, and has profound implications for our own moment, in which the Trump administration (more specifically White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller) is attempting to inflict profound economic and other damage on American research universities under the pretext that they are antisemitic in their policies or have coddled antisemitism.
Jewish American students, faculty and staff should never face discrimination on campus, but rather deserve to be treated with warmth and collegiality, like all members of the university community. Atisemitism is certainly a significant problem in American society that must be determinedly combated.
Groups such as the Stand With US Center for Legal Justice, however, construe criticism of Israeli government policies as a form of antisemitism, a stance that violates the US Constitution’s first amendment. That is, for one student in a class to speak demeaningly or pejoratively of another student’s ethnicity is unacceptable. But for the student to criticize the policies of a foreign government, however vehemently, is protected speech.
The plaintiffs alleged that “the MIT Coalition Against Apartheid and another student group, Palestine@MIT, sent an email to all undergraduate students with a “Joint Statement on the Current Situation in Palestine.” The statement said, among other things, that the student groups “h[e]ld the Israeli regime responsible for all unfolding violence”; “unequivocally denounce[d] the Israeli occupation, its racist apartheid system, and its military rule”; and “affirm[ed] the right of all occupied people to resist oppression and colonization.” It was signed “[u]ntil liberation.”
The plaintiffs alleged that the university’s complaisance toward these and other activities constituted a violation of the Title VI prohibition on discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin. Such discrimination would take the form of being excluded “from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving [f]ederal financial assistance.”