A Manhattan judge scolded Cooper Union Wednesday for claiming in court that Jewish students should have hidden from protesters during the campus unrest after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 terror attack — noting the standoff unfolded in “2023 — not 1943.”
The East Village college argued the students should have hid in a windowless attic or escaped through a back exit as pro-Palestinian protesters were cornering them in the school library.
The school also noted that one of its administrators had locked the door to the library to keep the protesters out, according to the ruling by Judge John Cronon.
The college’s claims came in a bid to toss an April 2024 suit from 10 Jewish student that accused the school of breaching Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by failing to protect them after the attack.
But the judge wrote Wednesday that he was “dismayed” by the schools arguments and said the standoff “took place in 2023, not 1943” — referencing a year when the murderous Nazi Party was at the height of its power in Germany.
“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,” the judge said in a scathing 54-page ruling.
“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 judge added.
Cronon, a President Trump appointee who since 2017 has been a member of the conservative Federalist Society legal group, also ripped Cooper Union for issuing a tepid statement after the Oct. 7 attack, in which Hamas militants killed around 1,200 Israelis and took 251 hostages.
The school “mustered only an anemic statement” in the immediate aftermath of the attack, “offering no direct statement of support for its Jewish and Israeli students” — and only offered a stronger statement later after prodding from the Jewish community, the judge wrote.
The judge’s comments came as he ruled to keep alive the bulk of the students’ civil rights suit, in which they accuse Cooper Union of fostering a “hostile educational environment” in the days after the attack.
Cooper Union’s president at the time of the Hamas attack and its aftermath, Laura Sparks, resigned in August 2024.
A spokesperson for the school said in a statement that, “Cooper Union is confident that the facts and evidence that will be established during the next phase of the litigation will strongly refute the allegations being made in this case and it looks forward to the opportunity to present them before the court.”
Israel launched an assault on Hamas in the wake of the attack that has killed more than 46,000 people in Gaza, including women and children, according to local health officials.
The world’s top war crimes court, the International Criminal Court, in November 2024 accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “crimes against humanity,” including “starvation as a method of warfare,” and issued a warrant for his arrest.
The court also accused former Hamas commander Mohammad Deif — who was killed in a July 2024 air strike — of “crimes against humanity of murder, extermination, torture, rape and other form of sexual violence.”
