Legal victory for Jewish students suing Harvard

Harvard loses bid to have discrimination lawsuit dismissed, though judge rules to limit some of the claims field by Jewish students.

By World Israel News Staff

A judge refused Harvard’s request to dismiss lawsuits filed against the school by Jewish students, though the scope of the case was limited in the decision.

U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns ruled in favor of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and Jewish Americans for Fairness in Education, two groups that filed lawsuits on behalf of Jewish students at Harvard who said they suffered from a hostile environment at the Ivy League school.

However, Stearns determined that claims Harvard directly discriminated against Jewish students could not be included in the lawsuit – rather, he accepted the argument that the plaintiffs could attempt to prove that the school was deliberately indifferent to antisemitic acts on its campus.

Earlier this year, Stearns declined Harvard’s request to dismiss a related lawsuit from Jewish students, who charged that Harvard had acted negligently by allowing its campus to become a hotbed of anti-Israel and antisemitic activity.

Jason Newton, a spokesman for Harvard, claimed that the school is against all forms of ethnically-based discrimination on its campus.

Newton said that Harvard is taking steps to address complaints by Jewish students that they feel unsafe at the school.

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

The lawsuit against Harvard was filed about a week after ex-Harvard president Dr. Claudine Gay refused to condemn egregious antisemitism during a congressional hearing about rampant antisemitism at elite schools.

When questioned about whether calls for the genocide of Jews are a violation of Harvard’s policies against bullying and harassment, Gay that she could not definitively say whether or not such chants were against the rules of the school.

She claimed that such a determination would be dependent upon the “context” in which the remarks were made.

Gay’s testimony during the hearing, along with revelations around numerous incidents of plagiarism in her academic career, led to her resignation from her position months later.

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