Israeli student sues School of Art Institute of Chicago, saying professor targeted her with anti-Israel images
Exterior view of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago building. A student is suing, alleging antisemitism. Photo by Interim Archives/Getty Images
By Beth Harpaz January 4, 2024
An Israeli student is suing the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, alleging that a professor repeatedly targeted her with antisemitic assignments.
The lawsuit against the college affiliated with Chicago’s famed Art Institute museum was filed Dec. 22 in federal court under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
A professor, Sandie Yi, is named in the suit, accused of “taking a leading role” in subjecting the student to harassment and antisemitism by incorporating into her coursework images that purportedly showed brutality by Israelis.
The professor did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In recent days, lawsuits have also been filed on behalf of Jewish students at Rutgers Law School and Canada’s McMaster University, while San Diego State University is being investigated by the U.S. Department of Education for allegations of Islamophobia.
The cases are among dozens of complaints and lawsuits alleging discrimination on campus in the aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks in Israel and Israel’s war in Gaza. Most of the cases involve antisemitism, but a handful allege anti-Arab bias and Islamophobia.
Images purported to show brutality by Israelis
The student at the Art Institute school, identified in court papers as Shiran Canel, is in a master’s degree program in art therapy and counseling. She alleges that Yi required the class to respond to images “allegedly drawn by Palestinian children” depicting brutality by Israeli soldiers, along with art about child sexual assault with dialogue written in Hebrew.
The school “retracted” the assignment, the lawsuit says, after the student said she intended to go to court to block the use of the material. The lawsuit alleges that the professor continued harassing the student by discussing the disputed material; soliciting “hostile” feedback from classmates related to the student’s presentations; changing course standards in order to “uniquely harm” her; and assigning the class to respond to images representing “displacement and colonization.” The professor ultimately gave Canel failing grades on her work.
The school declined to comment on the lawsuit specifically but said it “strongly condemns antisemitism and any discrimination based on religion, nationality, or any other aspect of a person’s identity. We have policies in place that prohibit discrimination, harassment, and retaliation, and the School is unequivocally committed to providing a safe and welcoming learning environment for all of our students, faculty, and staff.”
The lawsuit noted that the student’s application to the program was initially rejected after an interview with a single faculty member who subjected her to a “harassing inquisition” about her “ability to work collaboratively alongside Arab and Palestinian classmates.” She was accepted after she complained about the interview, and was told that the admissions process had not followed protocols.
The student, born and raised in Israel, is married to an American and has lived in the U.S. since 2015.
A professor’s post: ‘Israelis are pigs’
The lawsuit also alleges that Canel has “endured an endless tide of hatred, discrimination, and exclusion” condoned by faculty, many of whom openly supported Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks “while maligning Jews as ‘colonizers.’”
As an example, the suit cites a now-deleted Oct. 17 Instagram post by another professor, Mika Tosca, saying that “Israelis are pigs. Savages. Very very bad people. Irredeemable excrement. … May they all rot in hell.” The lawsuit says the student emailed other faculty about the post, saying, “Violent words often lead to actual violence. How can I feel safe?” — but received no response.
Tosca posted an apology the following day. The college confirmed that Tosca is no longer employed there but would not say why. Tosca did not respond to an Instagram message seeking comment.
In an emailed statement, Canel said that art therapy “is supposed to be about care. Hate of any form has no place in the classroom. I believe publicizing my story is crucial to raising awareness about the recent upsurge of antisemitic discrimination in higher education institutions and more broadly.”
Steve Blonder, attorney at the Chicago law firm Much Shelist handling her case, said the school “must be held accountable for enabling a culture of antisemitic vitriol and forced to fulfill its fundamental obligation to protect its students.”
Lawsuit against Rutgers Law School
Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Yoel Ackerman sued Rutgers Law School in New Jersey under state laws against bullying and discrimination, alleging that the school failed to protect him from a “hostile” environment and that it had “initiated a witch hunt” against him for objecting to a pro-Hamas video. The video, which was disseminated in a student group, falsely claimed that Hamas did not commit rape and mass murder in its Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, and instead accused Jews of engaging in “atrocity propaganda.”
Rutgers declined to comment on the specifics of the case but said it “takes seriously claims of antisemitism, Islamophobia, and all forms of bias and intolerance. Any such claims are investigated and reviewed, and where appropriate, remedial or disciplinary actions are taken.”
Ackerman’s lawyer, David Mazie, said Ackerman had emailed the post about the pro-Hamas video to Rutgers’ Jewish Law Students Association. Someone then reported Ackerman to school officials, claiming Ackerman had disclosed the identities, or doxxed, the students who originally disseminated the video. Ackerman denies that, saying he merely re-shared the video and comments associated with it.
The Rutgers Student Bar Association adviser, Sarah Regina, an associate dean who is named in the lawsuit, sent the complaint about Ackerman to her superiors, saying, according to the lawsuit: “It appears we have a Jewish law student seeking to take and publish the names of those students he deems to be supporting Hamas.”
The school has opened a misconduct investigation against Ackerman, Mazie said, and the Rutgers Student Bar Association took steps to remove him as a member.
The lawsuit contends that faculty and administrators were aware of the “discriminatory, antisemitic video,” but instead of protecting Ackerman, they created a narrative in which he “became the purported bully.” Meanwhile, the lawsuit says, “non-Jewish students who discriminated, bullied, harassed and intimidated him and other Jewish students faced no scrutiny.”
Ackerman, 36, is Orthodox and a first-year law student. In November, he filed paperwork seeking to trademark the phrase “From the river to the sea,” in an apparent — but quixotic — effort to block pro-Palestinian groups from using the slogan in protests against Israel.
Mazie said Ackerman’s suit was filed under state law rather than under Title VI because New Jersey has strong anti-discrimination laws.
Class-action suit against McMaster in Canada
On Thursday, The Lawfare Project, a nonprofit that provides legal services on Jewish civil and human rights matters, announced that it was filing a $77 million class-action lawsuit against McMaster University and the McMaster Student Union. McMaster is a public research university with 37,000 students in Hamilton, Ontario, outside Toronto.
The lawsuit alleges that Jewish students at McMaster have “suffered psychological turmoil due to faculty praising the Oct. 7th attacks in Israel and exposure to antisemitic rhetoric at rallies on campus.”
“This lawsuit seeks to establish and enforce effective, and enduring measures to guarantee a safe, supportive and tolerant educational setting for all students,” said Brooke Goldstein, executive director of The Lawfare Project.
McMaster said it had not yet received official notification of the lawsuit and that it could not comment on specifics of the case. But the school did say that “fostering an environment that is safe and inclusive for all members of the McMaster community has always been and continues to be a critical priority for the university, which condemns all forms of hatred.”
Islamophobia alleged at San Diego State
A campus-wide email supporting Jewish students at San Diego State University is now at the center of a federal civil rights investigation, tied to a complaint that the school “promoted hate and racism against Arabs and Muslims.” The school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine had criticized the email on Instagram.
The complaint was filed with the U.S. Department of Education.
In a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, a university spokesperson disputed the allegation that the email, sent by the university president, was Islamophobic. While the message started out by expressing “anguish” over Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, it also recognized the “loss of life” of “innocent Israelis, Palestinians, and countless others,” and asked for “understanding” that the events would affect “members of our diverse campus in different ways.” It went on to list resources for getting support and for reporting harassment of any type.
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