https://www.jns.org/haverford-doubled-down-on-jew-hatred-since-may-lawsuit-per-complaint-before-us-district-court/
On May 13, the Deborah Project, a public-interest law firm, filed a lawsuit under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act accusing Haverford College in Pennsylvania of creating a hostile environment for Jews. Five days later, at the highly-ranked private liberal arts school’s graduation ceremony, Haverford gave awards to multiple people accused in the complaint of Jew-hatred.
The Deborah Project filed an amended, 278-page complaint on Sept. 9 before the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, in which the firm accuses Haverford of “doubling down on every policy at issue in this case,” as well as making a “mockery” of and leveling a “calculated insult” at the Jews who told the administration repeatedly that they are unsafe at the school.
Lori Lowenthal Marcus, legal director of the Deborah Project, told JNS that the college not only decided to go forward with the awards five days after the complaint was filed, but it knew for months that Jews were feeling unsafe and neglected on campus. Students had complained since October, for example, about social posts by a professor Tarik Aougab.
“There were many, many, many complaints about his callousness and repeated all kinds of things that he did throughout the year that were insulting to Jews, so it’s not like it happened when we filed our complaint,” Lowenthal Marcus told JNS. “The people who are being insulted here are the Jews who complained all year bitterly.”
“Absolutely, they knew of everything. Repeatedly. Well-documented. Absolutely no surprises,” she said of the Haverford administration. “That’s why it’s deliberate indifference.”
The amended complaint that the firm filed relates to alleged Jew-hatred on campus that occurred since the initial complaint, and things about which the firm didn’t know when it filed the first complaint, according to Lowenthal Marcus.
“They’re completely emboldened,” she said, of the school administration. “That’s the issue. There’s no concern what it’s doing to the Jewish population at the school.”
“What’s different at Haverford—there’s more of an informed support for allowing what we’re complaining about at the school. It’s very much about free speech, except at the same time, microaggressions are policed carefully. It’s really truly a double standard,” she said. “The Jews are the compliant model students, customers, fill-in-the-blank. They complain quietly and write letters to the editor, while the other side screams and yells and breaks things. The louder you are, the more compliant the administration or institution is.”