Kasowitz Files Lawsuit Against Columbia University and Barnard College Alleging Egregious Civil Rights Violations for Their Antisemitic Hostile Educational Environment
Kasowitz Benson Torres, on behalf of Students Against Antisemitism, Inc., StandWithUs Center for Legal Justice, and several individual Jewish students, has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against Columbia University and Barnard College, alleging that Columbia and Barnard are violating the civil rights of their Jewish students, who are subjected to a severe and pervasive antisemitic hostile educational environment, which has worsened since the October 7 Hamas murder, rape, and kidnapping of 1,200 Israelis.
In their complaint, plaintiffs allege that Columbia and Barnard’s Jewish and Israeli students have been physically assaulted, spat at, threatened, and subjected to relentless intimidation and vilification. Students are forced to traverse mobs of pro-Hamas faculty and students who are given free rein to march through campus screaming, among other things, that “Jews will not defeat us”; “there is only one solution, Intifada revolution”; “f**k the Jews”; “death to Jews”; and “from water to water, Palestine will be Arab.” As the complaint alleges, faculty members and students routinely extol Hamas’s October 7 atrocities as “awesome” and a “great feat.” The complaint further alleges that Columbia and Barnard practice a double standard by which Jewish students are deemed unworthy of the protections afforded to non-Jewish students; hire and promote professors who support anti-Jewish violence and spread antisemitic propaganda; and repeatedly ignore Jewish and Israeli students’ safety concerns, even in the face of intolerable abuse. Rather than heeding the pleas of Jewish students for protection, Columbia’s President, Minouche Shafik, refuses to act, suggesting instead that the next generation of Columbia students needs to be “more resilient.”
The complaint asserts claims under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, New York Human Rights Law and New York City Human Rights Law and seeks monetary damages and injunctive relief requiring Columbia and Barnard to implement institutional, far-reaching, and concrete remedial measures.
The Kasowitz Benson Torres team is led by partners Marc E. Kasowitz, Daniel R. Benson, Mark P. Ressler and Andrew L. Schwartz, and includes special counsel Danielle F. Moriber, and associates Joshua E. Roberts, Jillian R. Roffer, Zachary N. Josephs, and Erin Ringel.
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