Harvard University failed to persuade a US judge to dismiss a lawsuit in which Jewish students accused the Ivy League school of letting its campus become a bastion of antisemitism.
Harvard students sued the university in January on accusation of selectively enforcing its anti-discrimination policies to avoid protecting Jewish students from harassment, ignoring their pleas for protection, and hiring professors who supported anti-Jewish violence and spread antisemitic propaganda. They sought an injunction to stop Harvard’s alleged violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars federal funds recipients from allowing discrimination based on race, religion and national origin, reports The Times of Israel.
The lawsuit was filed eight days after the university’s former president, Claudine Gay, resigned after coming under fire for her handling of antisemitism following the October 7 Hamas attack and facing a congressional hearing on the handling of campus antisemitism.
US District Judge Richard Stearns said the plaintiffs plausibly alleged that Harvard’s response to on-campus incidents was inadequate and that “the facts as pled show that Harvard failed its Jewish students.”
Stearns found sufficient allegations that Harvard acted with deliberate indifference toward its Jewish students.
“To conclude that the (complaint) has not plausibly alleged deliberate indifference would reward Harvard for virtuous public declarations that, for the most part, according to the allegations of the (complaint), proved hollow when it came to taking disciplinary measures against offending students and faculty,” he wrote.
Stearns said the Harvard plaintiffs can also pursue two other claims: that Harvard breached a contractual obligation to enforce its non-discrimination policies and treated students unfairly by failing to enforce those policies “even-handedly.”
The Harvard lawsuit is one of many similar ones accusing major universities of allowing and encouraging antisemitism on campus, which has grown massively as anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian protests erupted after October 7.
While Brown University and New York University settled similar lawsuits last month, Columbia agreed in June to provide safety escorts and take other steps to settle a lawsuit claiming its campus had become unsafe.
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