Analysis
Since no one else will act, Jewish students are turning to the courts
Since October, at least 50 colleges and universities have been subject to civil lawsuits
July 19, 2024 08:13
3 min read
Since October, at least 50 colleges and universities have been subject to civil lawsuits
July 19, 2024 08:13V Considering an Ivy League education? Approximately £70,000 a year will cover the tuition fees and housing expenses, granting access to a diverse network of students and faculties.
What that sum won’t necessarily guarantee, however, is protection from Jew-hatred. Since October 7, incidents of antisemitism on US college campuses have skyrocketed to previously unthinkable heights – increasing year-by-year by a staggering 700 per cent across more than 125 American institutions.
Jewish students have been spat on, cursed at, pinned up against walls, called Nazis while also – conversely – being told to “go back to Poland”, threatened as targets in mass shootings and advised to stay away from kosher dining halls – and from campuses in general after school administrators said they couldn’t protect them.
American Jewish students say university leaders hardly do enough to tackle antisemitism. Complaints by Jewish students to their administrators or Diversity, Equity and Inclusion offices fall on deaf ears. Worse, some have themselves described the massacre on October 7 as “exhilarating”, or are spreading “ancient antisemitic tropes”, as was the case at Columbia University where three deans exchanged private texts mocking the concerns of Jewish students on campus. As a result, more Jewish students are now reaching for the courts for protection and suing their universities for failing to properly address antisemitism, violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which is designed to protect students from discrimination and harassment on the basis of race, colour or national origin. A 2019 executive order signed by former President Donald Trump ensured that Title VI was broadened to also apply to discrimination based on antisemitism.
Since October, at least 50 colleges and universities have been subject to investigations by the Department of Education and civil lawsuits, including Columbia, Harvard, MIT, New York University, UC Berkeley and the University of Pennsylvania.
Valerie Gerstein, a mother of two teenage daughters, returned to graduate school at Columbia to build her skills in charitable work and complete a master’s in non-profit management. She did not expect that her time at New York City’s only Ivy League university would culminate in her joining a federal lawsuit, along with 46 other Jewish students, against the university for failing to protect Jewish students from verbal and physical abuse.
“Columbia, one of America’s leading universities, has for decades been one of the worst centres of academic antisemitism in the United States,” the lawsuit’s opening statement reads. “Columbia’s faculty and students have openly lauded Hamas’s October 7 atrocities as ‘astounding’, ‘awesome,’ and ‘great feats’… most striking is Columbia’s abject failure and deliberate refusal to lift a finger to stop and deter this outrageous antisemitic conduct and discipline the students and faculties who perpetrate it.”
For Gerstein and other Jewish students the legal approach is a last resort to guarantee Jewish student safety. “The only effective way for students to change the systemic antisemitism in US colleges is through the courts, since Columbia administrators have chosen not to make those changes on their own,” Gerstein told the JC.
While federal lawsuits against elite universities garner significant media attention, they don’t always lead to meaningful change, says Shabbos Kestenbaum, a 2024 graduate of Harvard Law School and lead plaintiff against the university for its inability to protect Jewish students from systemic campus antisemitism.
“There’s no greater indictment on the state of higher education than that, in order for students to achieve equity, equality, fairness and justice, they need to resort to a court of law,” he told the JC. “However, Title VI investigations, which fall under the purview of the Education Department, have never led to the ouster or firing of any professor or bureaucrat – nor has it led to comprehensive reforms. Almost all the time it leads to the university signing a document that they promise to do better.”
That’s why Adela Cojab, who sued New York University in 2019 for allowing antisemitism to fester on campus, points to the outcome of another lawsuit her alma mater settled earlier this month as a possible model for other embattled universities to follow. As part of the settlement, NYU agreed to create a new “Title VI Coordinator” position to ensure the university “responds adequately and consistently to allegations of discrimination and harassment based on all protected traits”.
Cojab noted that nowadays there’s a Title IX officer on every American college campus to address issues of sex discrimination and sexual violence, but very few colleges have so far invested in Title VI officers to tackle cases of discrimination based on race, colour or national origin at any institution receiving federal funds.
“A duty of care to Jewish students has been breached,” Cojab said. “The courts are now the only way to go and I am proud that Jewish students are finally claiming their rights.”
Jonathan Harounoff is author of the forthcoming book Unveiled: Inside Iran’s #WomenLifeFreedom Revolt. He is an alumnus of the universities of Cambridge, Harvard and Columbia