Harvard Students Sue University over Failure to Address ‘Severe and Pervasive’ Antisemitic Harassment on Campus By Brittany Bernstein
Harvard University students filed a lawsuit against university officials on Wednesday, claiming they have failed to protect Jewish students from “severe and pervasive” antisemitic harassment sparked by the Israel-Hamas war.
In a 79-page federal civil complaint, six Harvard graduate and law students who are members of Students Against Antisemitism say the university “has become a bastion of rampant anti-Jewish hatred and harassment.”
The suit says pro-Palestinian protests on campus have been rife with “vile” bigotry against Jews and Israel.
”Mobs of pro-Hamas students and faculty have marched by the hundreds through Harvard’s campus, shouting vile antisemitic slogans and calling for death to Jews and Israel,” the suit said. “Those mobs have occupied buildings, classrooms, libraries, student lounges, plazas, and study halls, often for days or weeks at a time, promoting violence against Jews and harassing and assaulting them on campus.”
Jewish students have also been met with antisemitic attacks online and in classes where faculty members have allegedly “promulgated antisemitism.”
“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 complaint says. “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 suit comes after Harvard president Claudine Gay resigned earlier this month amid mounting pressure over scandals involving her comments at a Congressional hearing on antisemitism on college campuses and over allegations that she had plagiarized in her past academic works.
During the hearing, Gay was asked whether calling for the genocide of Jews would violate the university’s code of conduct. Her reply: It “depends on the context of the situation.”
Representative Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.) pressed Gay over chants of “intifada” at student protests. Gay said the calls for violence do not violate the university’s code of conduct and claimed that the university is strongly committed to free speech and ideological diversity.
On October 7, the day Hamas terrorists invaded Israel, killing more than 1,200 people, most of them Israeli civilians, Harvard’s Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Group published a statement holding “the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” The statement failed to reference Hamas.
“Today’s events did not occur in a vacuum,” the letter explained. “The apartheid regime is the only one to blame.” The note was signed by nearly three dozen other Harvard student groups and drew the condemnation of political and academic figures for its effort to justify terrorism.
In the days that followed, a billboard truck drove around campus highlighting signatories’ faces and names under the banned “Harvard’s Leading Antisemites.” At least ten student groups who originally signed the document ultimately withdrew their support.
The lawsuit asks the court to order the university to take “corrective” measures, such as “the termination of deans, administrators, professors, and other employees responsible for antisemitic discrimination and abuse.” The suit also calls for the “suspension or expulsion against students who engage in such conduct.”
The students are also seeking punitive financial damages in an unnamed amount.
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