Harvard sued for Title VI violations and antisemitism

Several Jewish students at Harvard, and an organization called “Students Against Antisemitism” (SAA), have brought suit against Harvard University for its antisemitic behavior.  While the plaintiffs aren’t going after Harvard on First Amendment Grounds (and wouldn’t have a leg to stand on if they tried to), the allegations in their suit involving genuine violations of federal law.

First, Harvard is accused of violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which says this:

No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.

As the suit establishes (click below to read the long 77-page document), Harvard does indeed receive federal monies, most notably through grants to faculty.

Second, the suit asserts that the antisemitic activity at Harvard, involving students, faculty, and off-campus groups, did indeed deny Jewish students the full benefits of an education at the University, as they were intimidated to the point of finding it hard or impossible to study; some were denied access to study spaces by vocal pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel students; some classes included a huge dollop of antisemitic material, including canceling classes so students could go to pro-Palestinian demonstrations (these are invariably anti-Israeli and often antisemitic); and, finally, at least one Jewish student was attacked. This seems to add up to to “discrimination” under Title VI.

Further, and this is shocking, Harvard did little or nothing when Jewish students complained to the administration about the disruption of their education. In response, the administration invariably said, “We’ll look into it and get back to you,” eventually doing nothing. One sees this over and over again in the complaint.

Two more items are singled out. As I’ve discussed before, Harvard did not enforce its speech code uniformly: while mandating punishment for things like “fatphobia,” “ableism”, and “racism” (but not against Jewish students!), they ignored bigoted behaviors that, if directed against blacks instead of Jews, would have been punished. (Harvard does not have a First-Amendment-based speech code, and so it’s been irregular or even hypocritical in enforcing speech “violations.”)

Finally, Harvard allowed its own students (and outside organizations, who aren’t given the same license as registered student organizations), to engage in illegal violations of University rules of conduct, including sit-ins and prohibited demonstrations. In perhaps the most ridiculous demonstration of this kind of hypocrisy, Harvard not only allowed pro-Palestinian demonstrators to illegally occupy a University building, but even bought the demonstrators candy and burritos! (Jews, of course, never got burritos, as they don’t engage in sit-ins.)

As one of my friends wrote me after having read the complaint: “If even a fraction of this is true, the place has become a cesspool.”

I’m afraid he’s right.

I read the entire document, and it’s pretty shocking. You can access it by clicking below. Unlike most lawsuits, it makes pretty absorbing reading, as the degree of antisemitism that Harvard allowed, without punishing prohibited behaviors, is fascinating.  No doubt a lot of this is due to the DEI mentality that infests Harvard (ex-President Gay was infected with DEI-ism), so that Jewish students are perceived as oppressors who aren’t worthy of much protection. But perhaps I was just intrigued because this was where I got my Ph.D., and I was once proud of that (However, going to Harvard was, for me, a complete accident, and some day I’ll tell that story.)

The suit:

The plaintiffs include Students Against Antisemitism (described in the lawsuit as “a not-for-profit corporation organized under the laws of the State of Delaware, formed for the purpose of defending human and civil rights, including the right of individuals to equal protection and to be free from antisemitism in higher education, through litigation and other means”, as well as Alexander Kestenbaum, a Jewish student at Harvard, and five other Jewish students who wished to remain anonymous for obvious reasons.

Before I give excerpts from the lawsuit, here’s an article on it from Thursday’s Boston Globe. Click on the headline to see it, though it’s probably paywalled. I give an excerpt below it, but reading the complaint above tells you a lot more.

From the article:

Several graduate and law students at Harvard University filed a federal lawsuit against the Ivy League school this week, accusing the administration of failing to protect Jewish students from antisemitic harassment on campus during the Israel-Hamas war.

The 79-page civil complaint, filed Wednesday in US District Court in Boston, alleges that antisemitism at Harvard has become especially “severe and pervasive” after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks against Israel, which killed about 1,200 people, with militants reportedly raping and torturing civilians. Israel retaliated with a bombing campaign and ground invasion that has killed more than 23,000 people in Gaza.

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“Harvard, America’s leading university, has become a bastion of rampant anti-Jewish hatred and harassment,” the complaint reads.

Only one of the six plaintiffs is named; Divinity School master’s degree candidate Alexander Kestenbaum.

The others are identified as members of Students Against Antisemitism, as is Kestenbaum. The other plaintiffs are enrolled at Harvard Law School and the T.H. Chan School of Public Health, according to the complaint.

A Harvard spokesperson said Thursday that the university has no comment “on pending litigation.”

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Now for the lawsuit. itself.  I’ll give my own brief summaries (flush left) to bits of the suit (indented).

The gist of the complaint:

Harvard, America’s leading university, has become a bastion of rampant antiJewish hatred and harassment. Since October 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and slaughtered, tortured, raped, burned, and mutilated 1,200 people—including infants, children, and the elderly—antisemitism at Harvard has been particularly severe and pervasive. 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. 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 been attacked on social media, and Harvard faculty members have promulgated antisemitism in their courses and dismissed and intimidated students who object. What is most striking about all of this is Harvard’s abject failure and refusal to lift a finger to Case 1:24-cv-10092 Document 1 Filed 01/10/24 Page 1 of 77 2 stop and deter this outrageous antisemitic conduct and penalize the students and faculty who perpetrate it.

The prohibited participation of unrecognized student groups in demonstrations:

44. The Student Organization Policies also provide that unrecognized student organizations are not permitted “to conduct any activity at Harvard even though their activities involve Harvard” students, except under “special circumstances,” that Harvard will not provide “access, support, or benefits” to unrecognized student organizations, and that students may not use the “Harvard” name or marks in organizations’ activities without permission from a dean or the provost.

45. Harvard nevertheless regularly permits unrecognized student groups such as Harvard Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (“Harvard BDS”) and Harvard Afro to conduct, while using Harvard’s name, disruptive antisemitic protests inside Harvard buildings and on Harvard grounds without consequence. These unrecognized groups have, in recent months, extensively engaged in discrimination against, and harassment of, Jewish and Israeli students and continue to violate numerous Harvard policies by holding unauthorized events in which they recruit hundreds of students to interrupt classes with calls for “globaliz[ing] the Intifada” and violence against Jews and Israelis, among other disruptive and harassing conduct. Harvard takes no action to prevent these organizations from regularly harassing Jewish and Israeli students in violation of Harvard’s policies.

This also happens at the University of Chicago, in which an unrecognized group called “UChicago United for Palestine” regularly participates in demonstrations and sit-ins, both legal and prohibited. The University doesn’t do anything about it.

Disruption and deplatforming of study groups and classes by pro-Palestinian demonstrators (again, this is prohibited under Harvard University regulations):

63. Harvard Out of Palestine (“HOOP”), another student group, led a relentless campaign against retired Israeli Major General Amos Yadlin, a senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School of Government (“Harvard Kennedy”). For example, on February 1, 2022, HOOP organized a disruptive rally outside Yadlin’s first study group of the semester. As HOOP posted on its Instagram page, the harassment “continue[d] despite [the study group’s] efforts to change rooms every week.” HOOP also shared a video that showed its members standing in two parallel rows just outside the open door of Yadlin’s classroom, holding large banners and flags, so that anyone entering or exiting would be forced to walk through the gauntlet. The video also depicts protesters chanting and disrupting Yadlin’s discussion with students in the classroom.

64. On April 7, 2022, HOOP marched through campus, including in and out of buildings, banging on drums and using a megaphone to shout further accusations at Yadlin, charging him with personal responsibility for alleged “genocide.” Throughout the semester, Harvard did nothing to prevent HOOP from severely and pervasively harassing Yadlin and his students, notwithstanding, among other policies, Harvard’s Statement on Rights and Responsibilities proscribing such conduct as “unacceptable” violations of Harvard policy.

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators storm Harvard Law school in violation of student regulations, terrorizing Jewish students. Cops stand by and do nothing, nor does the administration:

99. During this upheaval, SAA Member #1, SAA Member #2, SAA Member #3, and SAA Member #5 were in a study room on the first floor of Harvard Law’s main building, attending a small discussion session with a former assistant to the president during the Trump administration, Jason Greenblatt. At the session, the students heard drumming outside the study room and found a mob at the entrance to Harvard Law with a giant banner reading “Stop the Genocide in Gaza.” SAA Member #2 watched as HUPD officers observed, but took no action against, the hundreds of protesters, including non-HUID cardholders, who were bypassing card scanners and infiltrating the building. The group stormed Harvard Law’s main building, marched down the length of the building’s primary first-floor hallway, and blocked the hallway outside the study room where the SAA members and Greenblatt were hiding. Fearing a violent attack, students in the study room removed indicia of their Jewishness, such as kippot, or hid under desks.

101. SAA Member #2 emailed Assistant Director of Student Life Jeffrey Sierra after the mob stormed Harvard Law to describe what happened. In two previous meetings with Sierra, she had asked him what could be done to stop the rampant antisemitism on campus and explained its impact on her. In both of these meetings, and in response to her email regarding the October 19 incursion, Sierra directed SAA Member #2 to CAMHS for mental health services and, on several occasions, said he was “not in a position to do more.” When SAA Member #2 asked whom she could contact instead, Sierra said he would speak with more senior administrators, but SAA Member #2 never heard from anyone else about her concerns.

Burritogate!:  In this one, students sitting in and violating the campus code avoid discipline.  Instead of removing the students, the administration allowed them to stay overnight, and the deans brought the trespassing students candy and burritos! It seems that nobody was ever disciplined.

119. The utter inadequacy and clear unreasonableness of Harvard’s response to antisemitism on campus was further exemplified on November 16 and 17 when, for twenty-four hours, students took over University Hall, demanding that “Harvard administrators release a call for a ceasefire in Gaza,” announce that “antisemitism [is] not the same as anti-Zionism,” and “investigate Islamophobia and suppression of pro-Palestine speech on campus.” Rather than eject or otherwise penalize those students, nine hours into the takeover, Dean Khurana and Adams House Faculty Dean Salmaan Keshavjee brought the occupying students burritos and candy. After twelve hours, Dean Khurana gave them the chance to leave without disciplinary action; when the students refused, he allowed them to remain overnight. When questioned at the House Antisemitism Hearing why the deans provided food to unlawful protesters and promised them no consequences, President Gay evaded the question, stating, “where conduct violates our policies . . . we have processes underway.”

122. On November 29, Harvard PSC, Harvard BDS, and Harvard Afro again organized self-proclaimed “disruptive” mass walkouts from classes across campus, targeting major lecture halls to disrupt the largest number of students and took over the Science Center’s classrooms and lobby, among other locations. During their takeover of the Science Center lobby—conduct prohibited by Harvard’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities—protesters surrounded and intimidated Jewish students, using megaphones to shout genocidal antisemitic chants, including “globalize the Intifada,” “long live the Intifada,” “from the river to the sea,” and, in Arabic, “water to water, Palestine will be Arab.”

123. The disruption, like many before it, was led by a student recognized by Jewish students as among the primary instigators of antisemitic abuse on campus, whose presence causes considerable fear and alarm among the Jewish students who live in the same dormitory, Adams House, which he has turned into a base of operations for anti-Jewish activism. Adams House Faculty Dean Keshavjee—who supplied burritos and candy to the University Hall occupiers—has done nothing to ameliorate the situation.

Harvard cancels festival that partly celebrated Judaism, fails to stop students from disrupting a Divinity School event:

125. On December 6, rather than prevent protesters from disrupting Harvard Divinity’s Seasons of Light celebration that evening—a “beloved annual multireligious service” and Harvard Divinity’s only annual event that includes a celebration of the Jewish faith—Harvard canceled it. That same day, Harvard GS4P students took over Harvard Divinity’s “Holiday Tea,” interrupting the Harvard administrators, faculty, staff, and students who had gathered there by unfurling a large banner alleging “genocide in Gaza,” yelling about a “Zionist genocidal campaign,” shrieking “there can be no peace without justice,” “free, free Palestine,” and “shame!” The Harvard administrators did nothing to stop the students. Kestenbaum, who was present, emailed the Antisemitism Advisory Group to report this blatant violation of Harvard policy—which occurred after President Gay publicly declared that Harvard would discipline this type of violation—but has not received a response.

Harvard asks students to remove an outside menorah at night instead of the campus police protecting it. The University allows a banned protest at Widener Library. 

126. Rather than take steps to protect Jewish students, Harvard has thus required that they limit or conceal their activities. For example, as Harvard Chabad Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi revealed, Harvard requires that he remove the Chabad Hanukkah menorah from the campus at night so that it would not be vandalized. Rather than ensuring the safety and success of the Case 1:24-cv-10092 Document 1 Filed 01/10/24 Page 46 of 77 47 Seasons of Light celebration and making it unequivocally clear that vandalizing the menorah was unacceptable and would be met with harsh punishment, Harvard addresses antisemitism by canceling events that include celebrations of Jewish culture and warning celebrants to hide Jewish symbols.

127. At the same time Jewish students were being cautioned by Harvard to abandon or conceal their identity, students celebrating the October 7 massacre and advocating death to Israelis and Jews were free to do so on campus and over social media, not deterred or punished by Harvard in any way. On December 10, 2023, during final exam week, Harvard PSC, Harvard BDS, and Harvard Afro oversaw a disruptive, aggressive, flag- and banner-waving takeover of Harvard’s Widener Library, and then marched to Massachusetts Hall, where students chanted “from the river to the sea.” Kestenbaum had intended to study at Widener but abandoned his plan, as he was concerned that his religious clothing would make him a target for abuse or violence. Harvard took no action to stop the Widener protest or discipline the students or organizations that participated in it.

Professors allow students to leave class to attend a general anti-Israel strike “in solidarity”:

136. On October 20, Professor Clio Takas emailed her students stating, “[a]s many of you know, [Harvard PSC] and [Harvard GS4P] are organizing a class walk-out and general strike . . . . I have decided to cancel section today in solidarity.” Similarly, Harvard Public Health Professor Nancy Krieger accommodated students who wanted to participate in the October 20 global strike by permitting the vast majority of students to leave class to protest. Krieger then excused the remaining seven (which included several Jewish students) and asked them to return along with the protesting students at noon. As it turned out, Krieger and the protesting students returned to the classroom some forty minutes earlier than the professor had said class would resume and, in the absence of the Jewish students, Krieger resumed her lecture.

And a section on hypocrisy taken from the lawsuit:

Harvard Only Embraces Free Expression Principles When It Can Use Them to Protect and Permit Antisemitic Harassment

154. At the heart of Harvard’s double standard is its discriminatory application of free expression and other principles. Harvard’s campus is a safe space for students of all protected minority groups other than Jews.

155. Harvard’s invocation of free expression principles to justify permitting antisemitic harassment is both hypocritical and false, especially given that Harvard is ranked dead last on free speech, ranked “abysmal,” out of the 248 colleges assessed by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Harvard protects speech only when it espouses positions Harvard supports and prohibits speech adverse to the interests of other groups Harvard deems worthy of protection. Harvard’s double standard is apparent when one compares Harvard’s failure to discipline anti-Jewish harassment with its warning to freshmen—during the Title IX training— that “sizeism,” “fatphobia,” “cisheterosexism,” “racism,” “transphobia,” “ageism,” and “ableism” are prohibited because they “contribute to an environment that perpetrates violence.”

156. Harvard also has no problem censoring controversial speakers or discussions— unless they espouse antisemitic views, in which case Harvard insists it is obligated to permit them on free expression grounds. In 2021, for example, Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences canceled a course on a policing strategy involving military tactics after student organizations expressed concerns about the subject matter. And in 2022, the Harvard English Department disinvited Dr. Devin Buckley from speaking on campus because she is on the board of an organization that opposes incarcerating biological males with biological females or permitting them to participate in women’s sports. But, as alleged above, Harvard readily permitted El-Kurd and Hill to appear on campus spewing anti-Jewish rhetoric, Holocaust denial, and calls for Israel’s extermination.

Below is the relief that the suit is asking for.  I have no idea whether the plaintiffs will win, but the document, if it allegations are true, makes a compelling case against Harvard.  What bothers me most as an alum is the University’s abject failure to do anything about the Jewish students’ complaints. Even Claudine Gay was guilty of that non-responsiveness. Right now, Harvard looks pretty bad.

If this suit goes through—and it could be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court—Harvard could no longer violate Title VI. In practice, that means that they’d have to enforce campus rules about demonstrations, and would have to be evenhanded in enforcing the University speech code. Fingers crossed.