[Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”]
Editor’s note: A culture of rampant lawlessness has been steadily growing in American academia. Our nation’s universities have shamelessly put their pursuit of woke leftist ideology ahead of their loyalty and obedience to the laws of the United States of America and the principles of freedom and equality of opportunity that inform them. The Freedom Center is exposing the worst perpetrators of this illegal conduct as the Top Ten Academic Felons, and we will be highlighting one school a day as we count down from #10 to #1. MIT is #5 on our list.
#5: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology might not at first glance seem a likely candidate for the list of Academic Felons. The hard sciences are supposed to be immune from woke doctrines. But in recent years, the science and math-geared behemoth has been corrupted by Jew hatred and leftist radicalism that has infiltrated the university’s classes and governance.
In a lawsuit filed by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law against the university last June, two Jewish students accused MIT of violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by failing to act when abhorrent acts of Jew hatred were committed against them, including by one of MIT’s own faculty members.
One of the plaintiffs, postdoctoral student Lior Alon, is a veteran of the Israeli Defense Forces. In the months following Hamas’s barbaric October 7th attack on innocent Israeli Jews, Alon found himself increasingly subject to persecution on campus due to his Jewish background and his past service with the IDF.
“During anti-Israel encampment protests in spring term 2024, Alon was prohibited from entering the Kresge Lawn section of campus, through which he needed to pass to access his office,” describes The Algemeiner. “The edict allegedly came down from pro-Hamas activists and was enforced by an MIT police officer, who became an accessory to the group’s usurpation of school property.”
But the worst abuse came at the hands of one of MIT’s own esteemed professors.
Michel DeGraff serves as a Professor of Linguistics at MIT. The Haitian-born DeGraff makes no secret of his far-left political leanings or his extreme anti-Semitism. His official faculty webpage lists his research interests as “Language, linguistics, education & knowledge production for decolonization & radical liberation.” Just two weeks after October 7, DeGraff shared a video on Instagram which celebrated Hamas’s acts of terror as a solution to Israel’s “decades of land thefts, massacres, [and] second-class citizenship.” DeGraff commented that this analysis “might give us a few more reasons why we should be Gaza — if we celebrate Indigenous People’s Day, if we admire the Haitian Revolution and other acts of resistance against colonialism and slavery, etc.”
DeGraff has also invoked the terrorist slogan that Israel must be “liberated” from Jewish control “from the river to the sea” and praised a New Yorker article that drew parallels between “the ongoing genocide in Gaza” and the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews.
Aware of Alon’s status as both a Jew and an IDF veteran, in the months after October 7th DeGraff made it his personal mission to make the graduate student’s life hell. He publicly doxed Alon by sharing his name and photo on social media and then tagging the Islamist news outlet Al Jazeera. The professor also wrote an article for Le Monde, a French publication, in which he called out Alon by name, writing “like many other Zionist counter-protesters, [Alon] participates in well-rehearsed propaganda that erases anti-Zionist Jewish students.” Alon’s lawsuit describes how he faced public harassment following these doxxing incidents and was even accosted at his child’s daycare.
Fearing for his own and his family’s safety, Alon sent an official notice to MIT President Sally Kornbluth asking that DeGraff be made to take down the social media postings doxxing him.
“I have been subjected to antisemitic harassment and defamation by a professor, including online doxxing, which has made me and my family fear for our safety,” Alon explained. Kornbluth did not reply, nor did the administration take any action whatsoever to rein in DeGraff’s horrific mistreatment of Alon whose only ‘crime’ was to be Jewish and a former member of the IDF.
Nor did DeGraff’s harassment of Jewish students stop with Alon. Another Jewish student, PhD candidate William Sussman, was also targeted.
The lawsuit describes how “Professor DeGraff posted a message targeting Sussman by name on his X platform of over 10,000 followers” adding that “Not a single administrator … intervened to stop the harassment or condemn the targeting of both a Jewish student and an Israeli professor in such a vicious and public way.”
DeGraff also sent mass emails to his entire academic department labeling Sussman as an example of a Jewish “mind infection”—a term the professor had adopted and frequently used in a seminar he was teaching titled “Language and Linguistics, from the River to the Sea in Palestine.” Astoundingly, DeGraff even cc’d MIT President Kornbluth on these department-wide emails, showing how assured he was of a sympathetic audience for his depraved rantings among the campus administration.
Again, Kornbluth and the rest of the MIT leadership took no action to halt the abuse. The lawsuit states that “while a long list of senior administrators witnessed the continuing antisemitic harassment of Sussman by a professor, the only person who spoke out in an attempt to protect Sussman was an Israeli professor who himself was targeted and harassed by Prof. DeGraff based on his Israeli identity.”
Leaflets that specifically called out Sussman by name were also placed under students’ dorm room doors. The flyers featured “white lettering on a green band (like those worn by Hamas)” describes the Jerusalem Post.
Sussman filed a formal complaint with MIT but was told by a university official that his complaint would not result in an investigation because DeGraff’s messages labeling Sussman a “mind infection” “do not suggest that Prof. DeGraff is treating you differently because you are Jewish.”
“It appears that Prof. DeGraff’s use of the ‘mind infection’ term relates to his views of the Israeli government, its education system, and how its ‘propaganda’ about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has impacted the discourse and events on US college campuses,” the MIT official wrote, justifying the use of the term.
Unable to continue his studies under DeGraff’s abuse, Sussman withdrew from the university and ended his pursuit of a PhD.
“Jews and Israelis on campus were prevented from fully engaging in their studies, their research, and the full spectrum of campus life,” states the lawsuit filed by Alon and Sussman. “They have been forced out of their programs, out of campus spaces, off campus, and even out of the university entirely.”
“This is a textbook example of neglect and indifference. Not only were several antisemitic incidents conducted at the hands of a professor, but MIT’s administration refused to take action on every single occasion,” Brandeis Center chairman Kenneth Marcus described. “The very people who are tasked with protecting students are not only failing them, but are the ones attacking them. In order to eradicate hate from campuses, we must hold faculty and the university administration responsible for their participation in — and in this case, their proliferation of — antisemitism and abuse.”
For its reprehensible failure to uphold Title VI and protect Jewish students from harassment and doxxing at the hands of a deranged professor, MIT deserves a place on the list of Academic Felons.
Previous articles in series:
#10: Academic Felon: Golden West College.
#9: Academic Felon: University of Arizona
#8: Academic Felon: San Jose State University
#7: Cornell University
#6: University of Louisville
