Harvard University has been sued by Jewish students alleging it “has become a bastion of rampant anti-Jewish hatred and harassment”.
The complaint alleges the Ivy League school is violating the civil rights of its Jewish students by tolerating and enabling discrimination on its campus.
It comes just over a week after its president, Claudine Gay, resigned in part over her handling of antisemitism.
Harvard has not yet commented on the lawsuit.
The complaint, filed on Wednesday night, argues that Jewish students have been “subjected to a severe and pervasive antisemitic hostile educational environment” that have worsened since Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel.
It claims that Harvard students and faculty members have harassed, intimidated and assaulted Jewish students in classrooms, in on-campus activities and on social media, including by calling for the murder of Jews and the destruction of Israel.
“What is most striking about all of this is Harvard’s abject failure and refusal to lift a finger to stop and deter this outrageous antisemitic conduct and penalize the students and faculty who perpetrate it,” the complaint states.
The claimants – a student at Harvard Divinity School and a group called Students Against Antisemitism, which include students at Harvard’s law and public health schools – allege that antisemitism on campus “manifests itself in a double standard”.
Harvard, they say, “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”, while disciplining those who engage in racism, transphobia and other forms of discrimination.
The complaint seeks monetary damages and an injunction to stop Harvard’s alleged violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars those who receive federal funds from allowing discrimination based on race.
The court filing was made by the Kasowitz Benson Torres law firm, which has launched similar lawsuits at New York University and the University of Pennsylvania.
Harvard has been under fire in the months since the Hamas attack, with the US education department and the House of Representatives both opening investigations into its handling of antisemitism on campus.
Last week, Claudine Gay – the university’s first black president – resigned following criticisms of her response to anti-semitism on campus, and allegations that she plagiarised parts of her academic work. She faced a firestorm of criticism over her December testimony before Congress, in which she failed to explicitly say that calls for the genocide of Jews violated university policy.