The Pratt Institute, a private art college in Brooklyn, disciplined a student who harassed a Jewish professor at the school after “consistent complaints” from the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, the center said on Tuesday.
According to the center, the student had been harassing the professor on social media since March and called the latter, who is the faculty adviser to the university’s Jewish Student Union, a “Jewish supremacist” and urged students to boycott his classes.
Pratt initially placed a mutual no-contact order between the two, but the student kept harassing the professor online in violation of the order and messaged him directly from “encrypted and pseudonymous accounts,” the Brandeis Center said. (JNS sought comment from Pratt.)
The school placed the student on disciplinary probation for the remainder of his time at the college after determining that the student fomented a hostile work environment against the professor and targeted him based on his Jewish identity. Pratt also removed the mutual no-contact order and instead sought to protect the professor, ordering the student to remove the social media post calling for a boycott of the professor’s classes, according to the center.
“This decision sends a clear message that targeting Jewish members of any academic community will have consequences,” stated Kenneth L. Marcus, chairman and CEO of the Brandeis Center and a former U.S. assistant secretary of education for civil rights.
