Jewish students sue Harvard for 'refund' for its alleged 'abject failure' to fight anti-Semitism on campus

A handful of Jewish students at Harvard have filed a lawsuit against their school after "rampant antisemitism" seemed to take over the campus in the wake of Hamas' attack on Israel on October 7.

Last week, six students, including a group called Students Against Antisemitism and a Harvard Divinity School student identified as Alexander Kestenbaum, filed the lawsuit in a U.S. district court in Boston, alleging that, while anti-Jewish bigotry has always been a problem at Harvard, the school has recently become "a bastion of rampant antiJewish hatred and harassment."

The lawsuit claimed that the Oct. 7 attack "emboldened" students, faculty, and administrators to participate in egregious acts of anti-Semitism, including harassing students wearing notably Jewish apparel in the student lounge and providing "burritos and candy" to a mob of pro-Palestinian students who seized control of University Hall in November.

Such instances of anti-Jewish bias reveal a shocking "double standard" about the enforcement of Harvard's code of conduct, the lawsuit claimed. "Harvard permits students and faculty to advocate, without consequence, the murder of Jews and the destruction of Israel, the only Jewish country in the world," it said. "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."

Kestenbaum, who goes by the name Shabbos, sat down for an interview with the Daily Mail and claimed that the Harvard campus has become so hostile to Jewish students that his parents do not want him to return. "I would not be surprised in the slightest if there would be an attack on Jewish students" sometime during the spring semester, he said.

The worst part is, he added, "Harvard just hasn't done anything to address these concerns." The lawsuit even claimed that Harvard has been an "abject failure" in enforcing rules against anti-Semitism.

Kestenbaum insisted that he didn't initially intend to sue the school and only filed the suit as a "last resort." "We tried to do and go through every other channel, but we were turned down time and time again. And we just didn't know what else to do."

The lawsuit demands disciplinary action against any students, professors, and administrators who have engaged in "antisemitic discrimination and abuse, whether because they engage in it or permit it."

Mark Ressler, an attorney with Kasowitz Benson Torres LLP, which is representing the plaintiffs, claimed that the anti-Semitic issues at Harvard extend beyond just members of the immediate Harvard community. He indicated that sizeable donations — perhaps from foreign countries — have been made to the school on the condition that faculty espouse a decidedly anti-Jewish or anti-Israel stance.

"The concern is that foreign countries are donating large amounts of money with strings attached," Ressler said in a separate interview with the Daily Mail.

Ressler said that during discovery from the lawsuit, he and others on his legal team hope to comb through various intra-office communications between Harvard officials — including former President Claudine Gay, who recently resigned after she was accused of ignoring anti-Semitism on campus, among other scandals — to see whether such donations have ever been made. Their goal is to ensure that "Harvard does not accept any donation from any foreign country that is conditional upon a professor spewing anti-Semitic venom in class or on campus," he said.

In addition to a better understanding of the motives behind school donations, the plaintiffs are seeking tuition reimbursement from Harvard, arguing that the school has failed to keep up its end of the bargain regarding student safety. "Whatever the cost of tuition is for a year at Harvard Law School, ... that should be refunded because Harvard has breached the contract it enters into with students," Ressler claimed.

Blaze News reached out to the office of interim President Alan Garber regarding the lawsuit but did not immediately receive a response. The school has already declined to provide a comment to Reuters.

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