Students sue Harvard over 'rampant anti-Jewish hatred and harassment,' violations of Title VI

Students at Harvard have launched a lawsuit against the school for violations of Title VI for "rampant anti-Jewish hatred and harassment" as well as "enabling" the behavior. 

The lawsuit alleges that Harvard has allowed and even encouraged antisemitism on campus in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  

A preliminary statement at the beginning of the complaint reads, "Harvard, America’s leading university, has become a bastion of rampant anti-Jewish hatred and harassment" since the attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.  

Opening the complaint about examples of antisemitism on campus, the lawsuit says, "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."

In addition to the demonstrations promoting violence, the students allege that Harvard faculty have "promulgated antisemitism in their courses and dismissed and intimidated students who object" instead of supporting them.  

There has been a "double standard" when it comes to the treatment of Jewish students on campus, the complaint states. "Harvard 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." 

"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." 

There is also a "double standard" when it comes to censorship, the lawsuit alleges. "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." 

The students wrote in the suit that in 2021, Harvard allowed Mohammed El-Kurd to speak at a sponsored Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement event. Kurd has previously written that he believes Israelis want to "harvest organs of the martyred" in Palestine to "feed their [own] warriors" and has indulged in other antisemitism.  

On the other hand, the complaint gives examples of censorship of other speakers, including one instance in 2022 where Harvard disinvited Dr. Devin Buckley because she was "on the board of an organization that opposes incarcerating biological males with biological females or permitting them to participate in women’s sports." 

The lawsuit was filed by Alexander Kestenbaum and five other students who are part of the nonprofit Students Against Antisemitism Inc., according to the Boston Globe. Those students who are unnamed are in the Havard Law School and the T.H. Chan School of Public Health. 

The lawsuit comes as the idea has been floated in Congress to take away its tax-exempt status, and after the resignation of former Harvard President Claudine Gay.