Jewish Students Sue Harvard Over Antisemitism Claims

CAMBRIDGE, MA — Several Jewish students filed a lawsuit against Harvard University Wednesday over accusations that the school has become "a bastion of rampant anti-Jewish hatred and harassment."

The plaintiffs, which include members of the Students Against Antisemitism, Inc., are accusing Harvard of violating Jewish students' civil rights and alleging that the university tolerated Jewish students being harassed, assaulted, and intimidated — behavior that has intensified since the Oct. 7 attack.

"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," according to the lawsuit. "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."

It was unclear what the reference to mobs in the lawsuit refers to, but the university has been rattled by protests since the Oct. 7 attack. At one point, pro-Palestinian students occupied a campus building for 24 hours.

Marc Kasowitz, a partner at the law firm that brought the suit, Kasowitz Benson Torres, said in a statement that the litigation was necessary because Harvard would not "correct its deep-seated antisemitism problem voluntarily."

"Harvard must be forced to protect its Jewish students and stop applying a double standard when it comes to anti-Jewish bigotry," he added.

A spokesman for Harvard said the school doesn't comment on pending litigation.

About a dozen students are potentially facing disciplinary charges for violations of protest rules related to pro-Palestinian activities, but the spokesman said the school couldn't comment on their cases.

Fallout from the Israel-Hamas war has roiled campuses across the U.S. and reignited a debate over free speech. College leaders have struggled to define the line where political speech crosses into harassment and discrimination, with Jewish and Arab students raising concerns that their schools are doing too little to protect them.

The lawsuit against Harvard mirrors others filed since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, including against The Art Institute of Chicago, New York University and the University of Pennsylvania.

The issue took center stage in December when the presidents of Harvard, Penn and MIT testified at a congressional hearing on campus antisemitism.

During the Dec. 5 testimony, Gay and her counterparts at the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology shied away from answering whether students calling for the genocide of Jews were breaking the code of conduct at Harvard, instead saying that the university 'embraces a commitment to free expression' unless it 'crosses into conduct that violates policies against bullying, harassment, intimidation.'

Their answers prompted weeks of backlash from donors and alumni, leading to the resignation of Liz Magill at Penn and Claudine Gay at Harvard.

Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks killed 1,200 people in Israel, mainly civilians, and abducted around 250 others, nearly half of whom were released during a weeklong cease-fire in November.

Since the war began, Israel’s assault in Gaza has killed more than 23,200 Palestinians, roughly 1% of the territory’s population, and more than 58,000 people have been wounded, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza. About two-thirds of the dead are women or children.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.