Harvard University faces limited lawsuit over anti-Semitism

By Jonathan Stempel

(Reuters) -A U.S. judge overseeing lawsuits accusing Harvard University of anti-Semitism has downplayed the case of two advocacy groups that accused the Ivy League school of making it intolerable for Jewish students to study there, but refused to reject it.

U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns said the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and the Jewish Americans for Fairness in Education can pursue a hostile educational environment claim on behalf of students.

The Boston-based judge rejected claims that Harvard directly discriminated against Jewish and Israeli students, retaliating against them for complaining of anti-Semitism.

In August, Stearns declined to dismiss a related lawsuit filed by Jewish students who accused Harvard of allowing its Cambridge, Massachusetts, campus to become a bastion of rampant anti-Semitism.

Both lawsuits accused Harvard of violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits recipients of federal funds from discrimination on the basis of race, religion and national origin, and sought to stop further violations.

The lawsuits are among several accusing major universities of allowing and encouraging anti-Semitism after the outbreak of the war in Gaza in October 2023 between Israel and Hamas.

Tuesday’s decision mainly concerned Harvard’s alleged mishandling of incidents from the spring and fall of 2023.

In one, a Jewish lecturer at Harvard’s Kennedy School allegedly pressured students in a course on organizing community action to abandon a project based on the existence of a “liberal Jewish democracy” , because associating ‘Jewish’ with ‘democracy’ created an ‘unsafe situation’. space” for classmates.

The other involved a viral ‘die-in’ near Harvard Business School, where attendees accused Israel of war crimes, chanted anti-Semitic slogans and allegedly physically assaulted an Israeli Jewish student.

Stearns said prosecutors may try to prove Harvard’s “deliberate indifference” to harassment, resulting from its failure to discipline the professor and alleged lack of speed in investigating several incidents.

“To conclude that merely initiating an investigation without any further follow-up necessarily defeats a deliberate indifference claim would be to prioritize form over function,” Stearns wrote.

Stearns nevertheless found no plausible accusations that Harvard’s responses reflected anti-Jewish or anti-Israel animus or retaliation.

Harvard spokesman Jason Newton said anti-Semitism has no place on campus, and that the school has taken steps to support the Jewish community, encourage civil dialogue and strengthen disciplinary policies and rules for the use of public spaces .

“This work is ongoing, and Harvard is fully committed and confident that we are moving in the right direction,” he said.

An attorney for the plaintiffs had no immediate comment.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York, Editing by Bill Berkrot and Matthew Lewis)