Judge W. Scott Hardy
PITTSBURGH – A Jewish former student is not happy with Carnegie Mellon University’s response to a court order requiring it to disclose how much money it receives from Qatar.
Pittsburgh federal judge W. Scott Hardy is handling Yael Canaan’s discrimination lawsuit and found last year that funding from the country is relevant to the case. Canaan, who attended CMU’s School of Architecture from 2018-2023, said she endured anti-Semitism at the hands of faculty and administration.
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. In an Aug. 4 court filing, Canaan’s lawyer cites a “blatant disregard” of Hardy’s order in the months that followed it.
“CMU has devoted the past eight months to manufacturing justifications for noncompliance while attempting to conceal the extent of the noncompliance from Plaintiff and the Court,” Bryce Friedman of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett wrote.
“CMU has done so through opaque and contradictory discovery responses, shifting explanations for its failure to produce ordered discovery, and representations suggesting compliance when the record showed otherwise.”
Ordered to reach an agreement, Canaan and CMU worked on a draft compliance order that ultimately failed when CMU notified her on July 28 that it planned to raise more objections to the provisions of the order.
“CMU’s continued refusal to comply with this Court’s orders is sanctionable and has substantially prejudiced Plaintiff’s ability to prepare her case,” Canaan says.
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.”
