Pennsylvania Judge Scott Hardy released an opinion on Tuesday affirming that a discrimination lawsuit could proceed against Carnegie Mellon University, a private academic institution in Pittsburgh. Yael Canaan, a graduate of the school who is Jewish and has Israeli heritage, alleges numerous incidents of bigotry and a failure of administrators to properly respond to them.
The suit, filed by the Lawfare Project in 2023, describes an incident when Canaan presented her architecture project on May 5, 2022, to Mary-Lou Arscott, a professor and associate head for design fundamentals at the architecture school.
Canaan had created a model to depict a wire fence eruv—an enclosure used by Orthodox Jews to permit certain activities not usually allowed on Shabbat, such as wheeling a stroller or carrying an object.
Arscott reportedly replied that “the wall in the model looked like the wall Israelis use to barricade Palestinians out of Israel,” and that Canaan’s time would have been better spent on a project that focused on “what Jews do to make themselves such a hated group.”
The suit describes the steps Canaan took to address the statement and the lack of assistance from the school’s administration to support her. One professor she reached out to for help, adjunct instructor Theodossis Issaias, allegedly lambasted her for “acting like a victim” and “calling all of us antisemites.” He allegedly said he was “not there to fight her battles for her” and that he “cannot be an advocate for the Jews.”
The suit states that Issaias showed hostility to Canaan in class, which other students noted, and gave her a low grade that prevented her from receiving an honors degree and put her scholarship at risk.
Hardy wrote in his opinion that “a careful examination of Ms. Canaan’s complaint reveals numerous factual averments that plausibly show that CMU intentionally discriminated against her through its deliberate indifference because she is Jewish and of Israeli descent.”
According to Hardy, “at this stage of the litigation, any reasonable inference that can be drawn from these factual allegations must, of course, be drawn in Ms. Canaan’s favor.”
