Six Jewish students have filed a federal lawsuit accusing Harvard University of violating their civil rights by allowing “anti-Jewish hatred” to flourish on campus, the latest blow to the Ivy League college’s prestige amid a public reckoning over spiraling antisemitism.
Students Against Antisemitism sued Harvard on behalf of four unnamed Harvard Law School students and one Ph.D. student, as well as Alexander Kestenbaum, a student in the master’s program at Harvard Divinity School, saying that antisemitism has become “particularly severe and pervasive.”
“Harvard, America’s leading university, has become a bastion of rampant anti-Jewish hatred and harassment,” said the lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts.
The filing blasted Harvard’s “refusal to lift a finger” to help Jewish students while allowing pro-Hamas mobs of students and faculty to march chanting “vile antisemitic slogans,” occupy buildings, and promote violence against Jewish students in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israeli civilians.
“Harvard permits students and faculty to advocate, without consequence, the murder of Jews and the destruction of Israel, the only Jewish country in the world,” the 77-page complaint said. “Meanwhile, Harvard requires students to take a training class that warns that they will be disciplined if they engage in sizeism, fatphobia, racism, transphobia, or other disfavored behavior.”
The complaint blamed a “double standard invidious to Jews” rooted in the far-left ideology prevalent at U.S. universities that divides people into camps of “oppressed” and “oppressor.” Jews have been designated by leftists as “oppressors,” despite being “one of history’s most persecuted peoples.”
As a result, the complaint says, life for the Jewish students at Harvard has become increasingly untenable since the outbreak of anti-Israel protests following the Oct. 7 attack.
“Kestenbaum, SAA’s Jewish Harvard student members, and other Jewish students do not feel physically safe on Harvard’s campus or in its classrooms and other facilities and avoid certain areas of campus,” the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit seeks monetary damages for alleged violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as well as an injunction requiring Harvard to implement “institutional, far-reaching, and concrete remedial measures,” including disciplinary action against deans, administrators, professors, students and others for “antisemitic abuse.”
In addition, the complaint asked the court to order Harvard to decline and return any donations, foreign or otherwise, “conditioned on the hiring or promotion of professors who espouse antisemitism,” said Kasowitz Benson Torres, one of two law firms representing the students.
The Washington Times has reached out to Harvard for comment.
We have just filed a lawsuit against Harvard.
— Shabbos Kestenbaum (@ShabbosK) January 11, 2024
For too long, Harvard has allowed, and in many cases, promoted, antisemitism on campus.
This lawsuit gives a voice for all those who have been on the receiving end of hatred, bigotry, and discriminationhttps://t.co/ESSxEsnCIx
The complaint comes less than two weeks after the resignation of former Harvard President Claudine Gay amid a public outcry over her handling of rising campus antisemitism and allegations that she committed nearly 50 instances of plagiarism in her scholarly works.
Harvard formed an Antisemitism Advisory Group in November to address the issue. But Rabbi David J. Wolpe, a visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School and the panel’s only rabbi, resigned in December over Ms. Gay’s testimony before a House committee.
Ms. Gay and two other university presidents were widely criticized for saying at the Dec. 5 hearing that whether calls for “genocide of Jews” would violate campus conduct codes would depend on the context.
University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill has also resigned following the hearing, while Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth remains in office.
In a Nov. 9 statement, Ms. Gay said Harvard was committed to “meeting antisemitism head-on.”
“Let me reiterate what I and other Harvard leaders have said previously: Antisemitism has no place at Harvard,” she said.
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