Judge W. Scott Hardy
PITTSBURGH – Money that Carnegie Mellon University receives from Qatar is relevant to a Jewish former student’s discrimination lawsuit, a Pittsburgh federal judge has ruled.
The school, which has a campus in Qatar, receives the second-highest amount of foreign funding, trailing only Harvard University. Qatar is the top foreign funder to U.S. colleges.
Judge W. Scott Hardy last week unsealed a December order that granted Yael Canaan’s motion to compel Carnegie Mellon to make certain disclosures about the money and its effect on the school. Canaan, who attended CMU’s School of Architecture from 2018-2023, said she endured anti-Semitism at the hands of faculty and administration.
“(T)here remains the question of whether the actual economic value of the CMU-Qatari relationship, including the total amount of funding CMU received, itself, is relevant enough to overcome CMU’s proportionality objections,” Hardy wrote.
“(T)his Court believes that the funding at the levels CMU purportedly received from Qatar is relevant. But, relevant enough? The Court believes so.”
Canaan’s 2023 lawsuit claims a professor told her that a project should have focused on “what Jews do to make themselves such a hated group.” That same professor then emailed Canaan a link to an anti-Semitic blog.
“After Canaan complained, other professors turned on her in retaliation,” the lawsuit says.
“They told her that she needed to stop ‘acting like a victim’ and that they would not ‘be an advocate for the Jews.’”
In response, Canaan says her class time was limited, one-on-one instruction was stopped and one of her projects was kept out of a book of studio work created by students in the class. All this led to migraines, depression and emotional distress, she says, adding she was “cheated out of the education” she spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on.
School officials failed to act on her complaints, she alleges.
To prove a campaign of anti-Semitism, she sought records relating to Carnegie Mellon’s financial relationship with Qatar. Canaan says she is not seeking invoices on how every dollar from the more than $1 billion from Qatar was spent, and Hardy ordered CMU to produce information reflecting the full economic benefit the school has received from the country’s money.
“Adjudicating CMU’s intent, motive, and purported deliberate indifference to Canaan’s rights under Title VI is of central importance in this case,” Hardy wrote.
“Canaan contends that CMU’s contractual and financial relationship with Qatari interests influences CMU’s handling of complaints involving antisemitic forms of discrimination, harassment and retaliation. Information regarding that relationship may be consequential depending on what such discovery reveals.”
