Harvard University has been sued by Jewish students alleging it “has become a bastion of rampant anti-Jewish hatred and harassment”.
The complaint alleges the Ivy League school is violating the civil rights of its Jewish students by tolerating and enabling discrimination on its campus.
It comes just over a week after its president, Claudine Gay, resigned in part over her handling of antisemitism.
Harvard has not yet commented on the lawsuit.
The complaint, filed on Wednesday night, argues that Jewish students have been “subjected to a severe and pervasive antisemitic hostile educational environment” that have worsened since Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel.
It claims that Harvard students and faculty members have harassed, intimidated and assaulted Jewish students in classrooms, in on-campus activities and on social media, including by calling for the murder of Jews and the destruction of Israel.
“What is most striking about all of this is Harvard’s abject failure and refusal to lift a finger to stop and deter this outrageous antisemitic conduct and penalize the students and faculty who perpetrate it,” the complaint states.
The claimants - a student at Harvard Divinity School and a group called Students Against Antisemitism, which include students at Harvard’s law and public health schools - allege that antisemitism on campus “manifests itself in a double standard”.
Harvard, they say, “selectively enforces its policies to avoid protecting Jewish students from harassment, hires professors who support anti-Jewish violence and spread antisemitic propaganda, and ignores Jewish students’ pleas for protection”, while disciplining those who engage in racism, transphobia and other forms of discrimination.
The complaint seeks monetary damages and an injunction to stop Harvard’s alleged violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars those who receive federal funds from allowing discrimination based on race.
The court filing was made by the Kasowitz Benson Torres law firm, which has launched similar lawsuits at New York University and the University of Pennsylvania.
Harvard has been under fire in the months since the Hamas attack, with the US education department and the House of Representatives both opening investigations into its handling of antisemitism on campus.
Last week, Claudine Gay - the university’s first black president - resigned following criticisms of her response to anti-semitism on campus, and allegations that she plagiarised parts of her academic work. She faced a firestorm of criticism over her December testimony before Congress, in which she failed to explicitly say that calls for the genocide of Jews violated university policy.
I’ll reserve judgement until more information comes out, but this really strikes me as a group of lawyers and agitators latching on to the zeitgeist.
It’s really quite sad that the Israel simps have abused the idea of antisemitism to the point that when I see accusations of antisemitism, I genuinely have no idea if they’re taking about serious bigotry or if they’re talking about people saying it’s bad to murder civilians.
The picture that the BBC included in the article seems like it may be the latter.
No need to speculate; the allegations are linked in the article:
Harvard students and faculty harass, discriminate, and assault Jewish students—including on October 18, when a mob of protesters attacked a Jewish student, and the next day, when a mob trapped a group of Jewish students in a study room
Subjected to intense anti-Jewish vitriol, including from their own professors and Harvard administrators, Kestenbaum and other Jewish students, including SAA members, have been deprived of the ability and opportunity to fully participate in Harvard’s educational and other programs and have been placed at severe emotional and physical risk.
Moreover, over the past ten years, Harvard has instituted admissions policies that have severely reduced—by as much as sixty percent—the number of Jewish students, an enormous decline that evinces an intentional effort, much like Harvard’s quotas one hundred years ago, to exclude Jews.
when a mob of protesters attacked a Jewish student, and the next day, when a mob trapped a group of Jewish students in a study room
The important part here seems to be left out: did Harvard punish the students responsible for this? I find it hard to believe that they got away with this if they actually did it and we know who they are.
He showed up at a pro Palestinian protest to try and dox the students there. They asked him to leave. He ignored them and was then escorted out. People did not say nice things to him.
I’m not sure there was a lot to punish.
That’s still speculative; for it’s merely one side making allegations without demonstrating substantive evidence in front of a court.
I start d (slowly) reading this and… Is this how legal briefs are written? It seems like a reddit blog post. For instance in the examples section they write “SJp … is one of the most vitriolic antisemitic networks on college campuses. SJP was founded by the chairman of American Muslims for Palestine (“AMP”), the leadership of which overlaps with the leadership of organizations that have been shut down by federal authorities, whose assets were frozen by the U.S. Treasury Department, or that were found liable in civil actions for providing material support to Hamas. SJP receives funding and training from AMP as well as from universities. SJP and its affiliates sponsor antisemitic events, host antisemitic speakers…” All of which I’m reading expecting a citation somewhere… Anywhere. It seems like easily verifiable stuff. But there is none. Is this how legal briefs are written?
Surely a drop in Jewish students would be a normalization of their previously tremendous over-representation in the Ivy league?
Now this is definitely antisemitism.
Being anti Israel is just not the same as being antisemitic. I’m not sure why that is such a hard thing for people to understand. Israel and Judaism are different things.
It’s because it makes it so much harder to be critical of Isreal if they can continue having anything labeled as antisemitic.
Yeah, OPs summary says they’re doing it to multiple schools.
If their claims are true, then yeah, Harvard (and the other schools) should be held accountable.
But we’ll probably never know if a settlement happens.
That’s my assumption–it’s basically legal extortion.
I will say that I believe that there is antisemitism in most places because there are humans in most places. Whatever happens at Harvard is probably not exceptional or notable in any way.
Universities encourage critical thinking. For a lot of young adults, it’s the first time being exposed to a lot of new ideas in their infancy. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was higher simply because they are processing new concepts and sometimes come to unfortunate conclusions.
And it doesn’t help that, as of late, the term “antisemite” is aggressively being expanded to include those who show any criticism whatsoever of the current Bibi administration.
It’s crazy to me. On October 6th, 2023, the Bibi administration was largely viewed as a far right, antidemocratic, religiously extreme collection of intensely corrupt lunatics. On October 7th, so many otherwise totally-reasonable people just forgot how they felt the day before.
That’s how people respond to terrorist attacks. Look at what America did after 9/11, rallying behind Giuliani and Bush to attack Iraq because… Then you had bigots attacking Sikhs on the streets, Freedom Fries because France opposed indiscriminate bombing, and just about the most ridiculous performative security measures for people wanting to travel in a plane.
History will remember. We will look back on this time as a dark period of bigotry, violence, oppression, and genocide.
It’s true. And we didn’t fix anything, we just made travel so much more miserable and put in laws to let the government spy on people. As we saw with both 9/11 and Oct 6, high surveillance isn’t the answer. We need to move beyond security theater and retribution.
I forgot about the spying! That’s another good example, further emphasized by the fact that I forgot about it entirely.
Your last paragraph can describe almost any time period in human history.
Freedom Fries because France opposed indiscriminate bombing
Speaking of which, he was apparently a slow learner.
to include those who show any criticism whatsoever of the current Bibi administration.
I’m not sure why you’re specifically mentioning one man’s administration.
The main conflation of anti-Semitism has been with anti-Zionism, which dates back far before Bibi came into power.
I have also found that some people become very angry when you point out that Palestinians and Arabs in general are actually Semites. There were actually a whole lot of Semitic groups in history.
Antisemitism has nothing to do with whether or not someone is of an ethnicity related to the Semitic language group. My guess would be that you are upsetting people not by pointing out that Palestinians are Semites, but by incorrectly claiming that antisemitism is in any way connected to the - very real - discrimination against and hatred of Palestinians and Arabs.
Thank you.
I don’t have the patience or tact to offer thoughtful and gentle explanations (as you did) when it’s “pointed out” that many people from the region could be considered Semitic.
It’s very much the sort of argument my clever nephew might make. He’s a smart kid, but he hasn’t gotten to the point where he can understand that a clever fact is not necessarily in any way relevant to a complex problem. And certainly not a devastating argument that can simply stop everyone in their mad mutual desire for destruction.
“Well, shit. We were all Semites the whole time???”
In any case, thanks.
Critical thinking doesn’t make people racist, though. I work at a university and have seen many people be edgy. Some do it for effect because they are, frankly, very immature and like that attention. Most who are actually racist were brought up that way or went down the rabbit hole sometime in high school.
Not to mention that Harvard will likely settle just to avoid going through discovery simply because they know there is an entire political movement looking for ANY excuse to go for blood with them.
They do not really give any details at all about the claims so it is kind of hard to have any sort of opinion on it.
The entire complaint is linked in the third paragraph. It goes into some detail about specific incidents of harassment of Jewish students and some of the ways that the university is systemically hostile to Jewish students, particularly those who express support for Israel, which, “is a crucial component of Kestenbaum’s and SAA members’ Jewish identities, and many of them are descendants of survivors of the Nazis, with family and friends in Israel.”
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With the information about the organzied harassment campaign that is openly available, I feel confident in judging that group as agitators and lawyers that terrorize human rights advocates.
What constitutes “the destruction of Israel”?
Nuking Israel because it’s primarily Jewish? Yes fuck that, that’s anti-semitism.
Israel as a purely Jewish ethnostate? Fuck that too, non-Jews live there and everyone is human. Netanyahu’s comments on “Israel solely for Jews” is fucking stupid and he clearly learned nothing from the 20th century German attempt at an ethnostate.
It’s unfortunate that entities such as the ADL have intentionally (and openly) blurred the line between antisemitism and criticism of Israel, and the news just regurgitates whatever they tell them.
Is antisemitism up? Yes.
Is it particularly bad at universities? Probably.
Is it up by 5000000%? (I don’t know the actual number, but the ADL likes to throw a big % out there.) No.
26% of Israelis are not Jewish, and all citizens are legally entitled to the same rights.
all citizens are legally entitled to the same rights
It’s worth pointing out that, in general and throughout history, citizenship is something that separates the privileged from the unprivileged. The in-group from the outsider. The masters and the slaves.
Touting the rights of citizens, therefore, does not necessarily rebut the parent comment’s criticism.
Not sure what you mean. Are there countries that guarantee equal rights to non-citizens?
No. And that’s quite my point.
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OK.
No they’re not. Jewish Israelis have Jewish ancestry, which entitles them to more rights, and Palestinians are explicitly signaled as exceptions to a number of laws (see: Palestinian spouses of Israeli citizens can’t be naturalized).
Well the argument goes that Saudi Arabia exists as a Muslim ethnostate, so why can’t Israel exist for the same reason.
Edit: not my argument.
Is anyone arguing that Saudi Arabia should be?
Yes, Israelis.
Well, at least they’re consistent.
Saudi Arabia should not be allowed to exist as a Muslim ethnostate, though. Their human rights abuses against those that aren’t part of their specific ethnicity and religious sect are pure evil.
“They get to do evil, so I should too” is a very bad argument that is not made by people who aren’t evil.
Saudi Arabia isn’t a Muslim ethnostate. It’s a state whose citizens happen to be almost 100% Muslim because this is Saudi Arabia of course they are. This isn’t defense of their treatment of
slavesforeign workers or anything of the sort, that’s just pure evil.
“It comes just over a week after its president, Claudine Gay, resigned in part over her handling of antisemitism.”
Is this just blatant misinformation or am I out of the loop? I was under the impression that she resigned over plagiarism while some people online criticized her for “antisemitism”. I haven’t read anything about antisemitism being a primary cause from any publication but this one.
As with anything you read about Israel, the facts are always distorted just slightly enough to completely change the message without flat out lying. It’s not just you, there’s a major funk around any Israel based news stories coming out of the mainstream media.
“selectively enforces its policies to avoid protecting Jewish students from harassment, hires professors who support anti-Jewish violence and spread antisemitic propaganda, and ignores Jewish students’ pleas for protection”
The problem with this statement is it is completely subjective and not at all objective. The first one is reasonable if Jewish students are being verbally harassed walking through campus with complaints being ignored. That might very well be happening. However, the other ones sound a whole lot like, “you hired professors who don’t 100% support Israel no matter what the country does.” One person’s “spread antisemitic propaganda” is another person’s “shared a story from a reputable news source that didn’t show 100% support for Israel.”
If you cry
antisemitismwolf enough times, sooner or later people will stop believing you.This is absolutely gross and dangerous behaviour if this is what it sounds like: calling protests against genocide and Zionism as somehow “antisemitic”.
There are real antisemites to be fought against: actual Nazis, MAGA assholes, Casa Pound, Proud Boys, etc.
Anti-Zionists are not antisemites.
The same anti-fascists who are fighting against all these true antisemites are also the same people who are fighting against the genocidal ideology of Zionism.
Zionism is just another fascist ideology. It depends on apartheid, settler colonialism, and ethnic cleansing in order to build an ethnostate.
It’s absolutely disgusting of Zionists to pull out the “antisemitism” card when Israel and Zionism are being called out. They’re intentionally trying to muddy the water and it puts innocent people in danger.
But they have always done it and it seems to work.
Without having seen the specific kind of “hatred and harassment” they’re talking about, I can’t form a valid opinion. I wonder, though, if people are interpreting fair criticism of the Israeli government as “antisemitism”. Fair criticism and antisemitism are two very different things, but I often see them confused.
Similarly, I wonder if people are trying to disguise hateful antisemitism as “fair criticism” when there’s nothing fair or reasonable about it.
As always, it will be difficult to protect freedom of speech while preventing and punishing hate speech.
This reminds me of this older video:
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Not all Jews are pro-Israel, pro-genocide, pro-harassment, etc (take your pick). This cuts both ways. Anyone saying that criticizing Israel is antisemitic is equating the two and being antisemitic themselves. That means you, Israel, ADL, etc, whoever.
You were always a sack of shit, don’t pretend it’s because other people did something.
They’re a troll who always takes the edgiest position possible. Ignore them.
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That last sentence convinced me this is satirical. I really hope I’m right
At first I thought you’re trying to simply mock the position, then I reread the other comment and withdrew my upvote.
It’s not only the last sentence that is terrible - it’s the last two. And sadly I don’t think this is satirical.
Nah @tygerprints is a racist piece of shit and better off ignored usually.
I think they and @downpunxx are the same person using different accounts to fuck with people.
You are wrong. That poster is either the worst person ever or a terrible attempt at trolling by actually being the worse person ever.
The only reason I haven’t blocked them is that the responses calling them out remind me that most people aren’t complete assholes.
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Who are you voting for?
right now it would be Cornel West but Jill Stein can win me back
