We reported previously on two lawsuits, one against New York University and one against the University of Pennsylvania, each alleging rampant antisemitism on each campus:
The Complaints against each school detail allegations of antisemitism so disturbing that they truly beggar belief.
You can review the NYU Complaint here, and please read the whole thing, but check out this excerpt:
NYU has not “addressed and ameliorated” campus antisemitism, as the university committed to do three years ago. In fact, shockingly, NYU has done the opposite—it has deliberately sought to burnish its antisemitic credentials and make the campus environment even more hostile and frightening for Jewish students. For example, on October 9, just two days after the horrific terrorist attack in Israel, NYU announced the appointment of Eve Tuck to establish a so-called “Center for Indigenous Studies” at NYU. Professor Tuck, who has a long history of anti-Israel statements, wasted no time praising the murder of Jews. Four days after the Hamas massacre, she called the “Palestinian resistance” “life and future affirming,” and two weeks later, signed a viciously antisemitic open letter defaming Israel. NYU did not censure or terminate Professor Tuck—as it has done for far less egregious conduct where antisemitism was not involved—but remained silent for a month, when it belatedly issued a statement on her behalf purporting to condemn Hamas’s terrorism—which, given her previous statements, could not have been more disingenuous.[emphasis added]
If anything, the allegations of gross antisemitism in the Penn Complaint are even worse. You can read the entire, 259-paragraph, 84-page Penn Complaint here, but below are the first two paragraphs of the Complaint:
1. Penn, the historic 300-year-old Ivy League university, has transformed itself into an incubation lab for virulent anti-Jewish hatred, harassment, and discrimination. Once welcoming to Jewish students, Penn now subjects them to a pervasively hostile educational environment. Among other things, Penn enforces its own rules of conduct selectively to avoid protecting Jewish students from hatred and harassment, hires rabidly antisemitic professors who call for anti-Jewish violence and spread terrorist propaganda, and ignores Jewish students’ pleas for protection. In doing so, Penn has placed plaintiffs and other Jewish and Israeli students at severe emotional and physical risk.2. This lawsuit seeks to hold Penn accountable under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for the damages it has caused plaintiffs and for its failure to remedy the hostile environment on its campus. The harassment and discrimination on campus and in the classroom are relentless and intolerable. Plaintiffs and their Jewish peers are routinely subjected to vile and threatening antisemitic slurs and chants such as “Intifada Revolution,” “from the River to the Sea,” “Fuck the Jews,” “the Jews deserve everything that is happening to them,” “you are a dirty Jew, don’t look at us,” “keep walking you dirty little Jew,” “get out of here kikes!” and “go back to where you came from.” Plaintiffs and other Jewish students must traverse classrooms, dormitories, and buildings vandalized with antisemitic graffiti. Subjected to intense anti-Jewish vitriol, these students have been deprived of the ability and opportunity to fully and meaningfully participate in Penn’s educational and other programs.[emphasis added]
Please watch this quick 5-minute video by the lead Plaintiff in the Penn lawsuit to get a feel for how he and other Jewish students at Penn are (allegedly) treated by their fellow students, Professors, and Penn Administration:
Both lawsuits were brought by New York City heavy hitter litigation law firm Kasowitz Benson Torres, whose tagline is: “Creative. Aggressive. Relentless,” and named partners Marc E. Kasowitz and Daniel R. Benson, among others, are representing the Plaintiffs in both cases. I highly recommend watching Kasowitz’s firm video available here.
And now, Kasowitz has brough yet another antisemitism lawsuit, this time against Harvard.
For a quick summary, see our report here: Jewish Students Sue Harvard for ‘Enabling Antisemitism’ on Campus.
You can review the antisemitism Complaint against Harvard here:
[pdf-embedder url=”https://legalinsurrection.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Kasowitz-Harvard-Antisemitism-Complaint.pdf” title=”Kasowitz Harvard Antisemitism Complaint”]
Please read the entire 209-paragraph, 77-page Complaint. Two excerpts:
1. Harvard, America’s leading university, has become a bastion of rampant anti-Jewish hatred and harassment. Since October 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and slaughtered, tortured, raped, burned, and mutilated 1,200 people—including infants, children, and the elderly—antisemitism at Harvard has been particularly severe and pervasive. 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. Those mobs have occupied buildings, classrooms, libraries, student lounges, plazas, and study halls, often for days or weeks at a time, promoting violence against Jews and harassing and assaulting them on campus. Jewish students have been attacked on social media, and Harvard faculty members have promulgated antisemitism in their courses and dismissed and intimidated students who object. 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.2. Harvard’s antisemitism cancer—as a past Harvard president termed it—manifests itself in a double standard invidious to Jews. 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. Those professors teach and advocate through a binary oppressor-oppressed lens, through which Jews, one of history’s most persecuted peoples, are typically designated “oppressor,” and therefore unworthy of support or sympathy. 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. 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….50. Harvard PSC [“Palestine Solidarity Committee”], SJP [“Students for Justice in Palestine”], and similar groups have harassed Jews on campus for years without consequence, exemplifying Harvard’s deliberate indifference to its severe antisemitism problem. For example, on April 14, 2016, Harvard Law held an event featuring a speech by Tzipi Livni, a leading Israeli politician. At the event, a student SJP leader accosted Livni, asking her, echoing anti-Jewish stereotypes promoted by, among others, the Nazis: “How is that you are so smelly? It’s regarding your odor—about the odor of Tzipi Livni, very smelly.” Harvard did not discipline this student, but, instead, the then-dean of Harvard Law—while recognizing that “[m]any perceive [the incident] as anti-Semitic”—responded “that speech is and should be free,” notwithstanding that the conduct plainly violated policies including Harvard’s Statement on Rights and Responsibilities.
The rest of the Complaint is filled with similar, outrageous allegations about the heinous antisemitism existing at Harvard and Harvard’s abject failure to do anything about it.
These three lawsuits have “legs” as we say in the business; i.e. they’re not going to dismissed or settled without major, campus-changing actions taken by each university, which seems impossible at this point. In the NYU lawsuit, NYU filed a motion for a conference with the Judge to discuss their expected Motion to Dismiss. NYU’s grounds for dismissal, as stated in the letter, are that NYU has instituted a 10-Point Plan to combat antisemitism, and have taken other actions to ameliorate the situation, including opening a “Center for the Study of Antisemitism.”
The NYU Plaintiffs are having none of it. See these excerpts from the Response filed by Kasowitz on behalf of the Plaintiffs:
NYU says that because it plans to open a “Center for the Study of Antisemitism” next fall and has issued a (patently inadequate) “10-Point Plan”—“plans” and “processes” which NYUsays are “evolv[ing]”—this Court must dismiss plaintiffs’ claims or must compel plaintiffs to wait for some unspecified period to see if the hostile educational environment on NYU’s campus is remedied. Meanwhile, plaintiffs are forced to run a daily gauntlet of unconscionable harassment on campus—harassment NYU would not tolerate if directed at any other group—where Jewish students are physically and verbally assaulted, subjected to genocidal threats such as “Hitler was right,” “gas the Jews,” and “death to kikes”, and forced to traverse university buildings past students and faculty chanting antisemitic slogans and brandishing antisemitic posters. Incredibly, even as plaintiffs allege that they fear for their physical safety, NYU insists that it is the victim, complaining that allowing this lawsuit to proceed would impose a “hardship on NYU by . . . infringing on the flexibility it needs to function.” (emphasis added)….NYU’s proposed motion is contrary to controlling … law. Not only would granting the motion deny plaintiffs their right to seek relief, but it would also provide every defendant a roadmap for avoiding or delaying accountability for egregious discrimination by simply announcing “ongoing” “plans” and “processes.” NYU does not, as it cannot, cite any authority justifying such an extraordinary result, and a pre-motion conference would be a waste of the Court’s and the parties’ resources. In any event, plaintiffs intend to file an amended complaint by January 31, 2023, adding plaintiffs and further allegations of recent antisemitic harassment on campus—which only confirm the falsity of NYU’s assurances that it is solving the problem.[bold emphasis added]
Federal Judge Paul Crotty in the NYU case has set a teleconference with the lawyers for each party down for this coming Tuesday, January 16, to discuss NYU’s expected Motion to Dismiss. I would love to be a fly on the wall at the teleconference, because I predict Judge Crotty is going to indicate to NYU that any such motion to dismiss has little chance of being granted.
In any case, we will keep tabs on all three cases and keep you updated.
In the meantime, from X:
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