A California judge’s landmark injunction that sided with Jewish UCLA students complaining of unbearable anti-Semitism at the university, and a similar ruling by a Massachusetts judge allowing a discrimination lawsuit against Harvard to go to trial, have sent shock waves across the Ivy League landscape.
“In the year 2024, in the United States of America, in the State of California, in the City of Los Angeles, Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith,” wrote Judge Mark Scarsi in a scathing ruling.
“This fact is so unimaginable and so abhorrent, that it bears repeating: Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith,” the judge emphasized.
Anti-Semitic hate fests were fueled by anti-Israel agitators living in tent encampments on college campuses from April to May, with most university administrations behaving as indifferent bystanders at best, and at worse, aiding the inciters.
The pro-Hamas rioters at UCLA had created a “Jew Exclusion Zone,” where, in order to pass through, a student had to pledge allegiance to the protestors’ doctrine denouncing the State of Israel.
Those who complied were issued wristbands to allow them access to the campus, the complaint alleges. Students who refused to condemn Israel were effectively barred, as trying to pass the human blockade without a wristband meant risking violent pushback.
In siding with the students, Judge Scarsi ordered UCLA to ensure access for Jewish students to all UCLA’s program and campus areas, or else cancel all classes, programs and activities from which Jewish students were being barred, while the lawsuit makes its way through the courts.
Under constitutional principles, “UCLA may not allow services to some students when UCLA knows that other students are excluded on religious grounds, regardless of who engineered the exclusion,” Judge Scarsi explained in the court order.
He slammed UCLA officials for claiming that they had “no responsibility” to defend Jewish students, and rebuked the school for abandoning its responsibility to treat all of its students equally.
The preliminary injunction Judge Scarsi imposed on UCLA is the first of its kind against an American university for turning a blind eye to anti-Semitic harassment, Fox News reported. Experts argue the preliminary ruling’s impact may exert a ripple effect on university campuses across the nation.
“While this decision might only affect UCLA in the immediate term, it should reverberate across the country,” said James Pasch of the Anti-Defamation League. “Every university should note that their students cannot be banned from campus or from campus organizations just for who they are, full stop.”
UCLA Described as Hotbed of Anti-Semitism
Three Jewish students, Yitzy Frankel, Eden Shmuelian and Joshua Ghayoum, had filed a complaint against UCLA in June asserting that university had degenerated into a “hotbed of antisemitism” in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war.
They described a “war zone” atmosphere were Jewish students felt threatened and besieged, while school authorities took no steps to ensure their safety.
“This rampant anti-Jewish environment first burst into view on October 8, 2023, the day after Hamas terrorists attacked Israel in a harrowing rampage that saw over one thousand innocent Jews, including infants and the elderly, murdered… and mutilated,” argued the brief, filed by Becket Law and co-counsel Clement & Murphy.
“In the wake of these horrifying events, UCLA should have taken steps to ensure that its Jewish students were safe and protected from harassment,” the complaint continued. “Instead, they routinely turned their backs on Jewish students, aiding and abetting a culture that has allowed calls for the annihilation of the Jewish people, and where Nazi symbolism and religious slurs go unchecked.”
Scenes Out of a Very Dark Time
The UCLA lawsuits cited a number of extreme examples of virulent anti-Semitism by campus agitators that read like scenes out of pre-Holocaust Europe.
“At an October 12, 2023, demonstration at Bruin Plaza — a thoroughfare in the heart of UCLA’s undergraduate campus — activists chanted ‘Itbah El Yahud’ (‘slaughter the Jews’ in Arabic).”
“On April 25, 2024, a group of activists ‘established,’ as Chancellor Block described it, ‘an unauthorized physical encampment on part of the Royce Quad. . . .’ Those inside the encampment chanted anti-Semitic slurs like ‘This is the final solution—Death to Israel, death to Jews!’”
The brief describes the frightening confrontations Jewish students faced as they tried to get past the encampments.
“At these checkpoints, students were frequently asked if they were a ‘Zionist,’ or accused of being ‘Zionists,’ and were denied entry. Others were denied passage simply for wearing a Star of David necklace.”
“On April 28, 2024, a female student suffered a concussion after clashing with an encampment member. That same night, another female student was pepper-sprayed by a member of the encampment.”
Yitzy Frankel, one of the plaintiffs in the UCLA lawsuit, is a third-year law student and father of four who testified he faced anti-Semitic harassment last semester for wearing a yarmulke. He was forced to abandon his regular routes through the campus because of the Jew Exclusion Zone.
The lawsuit claimed that UCLA’s administration knew about the protestors’ blockade of Jewish students.
“UCLA Chancellor Gene Block publicly acknowledged that “‘students on their way to class have been physically blocked from accessing parts of the campus,’” the suit states. “But, in a remarkable display of cowardice, appeasement, and illegality, the administration did nothing to stop it.”
School authorities took refuge in the argument that since the anti-Israel encampments were “engineered by third-party protesters” –agitators from outside the college—they had no obligation to intervene on behalf of Jewish students.
As noted above, the court held differently, ordering UCLA to cancel any classes or programs and shut down any campus areas from which Jewish students were being barred.
School Officials Facilitated ‘Jew Exclusion Zone’
School officials not only failed to intervene, they adopted a policy of actually facilitating the Jew Exclusion Zone,” the lawsuit asserts. “Among other things, they ordered UCLA campus police to stand down and step aside.”
UCLA also hired security staff and stationed them around the perimeter of the encampment. Instead of assisting Jewish in gaining access to the campus, the security staff followed UCLA instructions to “discourage unapproved students” from attempting to cross through the barricaded areas, the lawsuit detailed.
These security officers acted as an arm of the agitators, informing Jewish students that they needed “permission” from the encampment leaders to gain access to the “restricted areas” of the campus.
Until law enforcement disbanded the encampments in late May, the Jew Exclusion Zone wreaked havoc on the lives of Jewish students who were simply trying to attend classes and study for exams, the complaint alleges.
The lawsuit charged the UCLA administration with violating numerous federal and state constitutional guarantees, including the Equal Protection Clause, the Free Exercise Clause, and the freedom of speech.
Institutions that receive federal funding are required under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to ensure equal access for all students to educational facilities, which UCLA has failed to do, the lawsuit charged. Plaintiffs need immediate injunctive relief to ensure that neither they nor any other Jew will again suffer from the discrimination they have endured.
UCLA initially announced it would appeal Judge Scarsi’s preliminary injunction. In a statement to the Washington Free Beacon early this month, however, a UCLA spokeswoman said the school had decided to withdraw its appeal “and will abide by the injunction as this case makes its way through the courts.”
Judge Approves Anti-Semitism Lawsuit Against Harvard
Shortly after the temporary injunction against UCLA was handed down, a U.S. district judge denied Harvard’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by six Jewish students in January, alleging that the University had failed to address “severe and pervasive” campus antisemitism.
Harvard filed a motion to dismiss the suit three months later, arguing that the University has taken concrete steps to address antisemitism through the creation of special task forces aimed at combatting all forms of bias on campus.
But the court was skeptical of these claims. As Judge Stearns wrote in August, dismissing the lawsuit “would reward Harvard for virtuous public declarations” that, according to the allegations, “proved hollow when it came to actually meting out disciplinary measures.”
The 25-page ruling by Judge Stearns allowed the lawsuit against Harvard to proceed to discovery. Stearns wrote in the ruling that the plaintiffs “plausibly establish that Harvard’s response failed Title VI’s commands.”
“In many instances,” Harvard did not respond to “an eruption of anti-Semitism on campus,” Stearns wrote, citing its alleged failure to take disciplinary measures against “offending students and faculty.”
Though Stearns did not rule on the merits of the case, he allowed the claim that Harvard acted with “deliberate indifference” to proceed because the plaintiffs’ examples “suffice to state a breach of contract claim.”
Stearns said the Harvard plaintiffs can also pursue two other claims: that Harvard breached a contractual obligation to enforce its non-discrimination policies, and treated students unfairly by failing to enforce those policies “evenhandedly.”
The Court drew on dozens of incidents described in the lawsuit when the administration allegedly abandoned Jewish students to an onslaught of bullying and abuse.
In a 79-page Complaint against Harvard, graduate student Shabbos Kestenbaum and other students accused the school of selectively enforcing its anti-discrimination policies to avoid protecting Jewish students from harassment; ignoring their pleas for protection; and hiring professors who supported anti-Jewish violence and spread anti-Semitic propaganda.
This places the school in flagrant violation of Jewish students’ civil rights under Title VI of the U.S. Civil Rights Act, the lawsuit says.
“For too long, Harvard has allowed, and in many cases, promoted, anti-Semitism on campus. This lawsuit gives a voice for all those who have been on the receiving end of hatred, bigotry and discrimination,” said Kestenbaum, who is also president and founder of the school’s Jewish Student Association.
“We turned to the courts only after it was clear there was no other recourse,” Kestenbaum explained in a Fox and Friends appearance. “We tried to engage with deans to enforce the schools’ own rules against anti-Semitic harassment but got nowhere.”
The graduate student went on to describe scenes at Harvard when pro-Hamas elements commandeered the campus, turning it into a platform to bash Israel and Jews in front of “thousands of students.”
He described an ominous university landscape “where swastikas are painted all over the place, and there is no condemnation or any type of action coming from the authorities.”
Harvard’s Secrets to Surface During Discovery
Marc Kasowitz, a lawyer with the firm Kasowitz Benson Torres representing the plaintiffs, said in an interview that “as the case proceeds, we’re going to take all the steps that are necessary and appropriate to protect Harvard’s Jewish students.”
“And the first step we’re going to take,” he pledged, “is getting discovery of Harvard’s internal files and communications that show the full extent of its failures here.”
These internal records are likely to shed light on how members of Harvard’s leadership responded to the most turbulent semester in the university’s recent history, including who was the driving force behind the university’s policies of ignoring, downplaying and even enabling the toxic eruption of anti-Semitism.
“We are delighted that the judge recognizes what we have been saying for months now: Harvard has enabled, normalized, and celebrated a culture of antisemitism on its campus,” Kestenbaum wrote. “Jewish students will continue to speak up,” he added, urging fellow co-religionists to stand up for their rights under the law.
The lawsuit filed in January is one of many accusing major universities of allowing and encouraging antisemitism following last October’s outbreak of war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas.
Two other Ivy League schools, Brown University and New York University, settled similar cases last month with undisclosed sums awarded to the student plaintiffs.
Ivy League Lawsuits Will Test 60 Year-Old Civil Rights Law
The multiple lawsuits against Ivy League schools filed during this year by Jewish students have almost all cited Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This law may now become the most powerful legal tool to force universities to protect their students from anti-Semitic bullying and discrimination on their campuses.
Universities that receive federal money are obligated by Title VI to protect students against harassment on the basis of race, color or national origin, categories that encompass antisemitism. It covers public and private campuses at all educational levels.
Losing federal funding would be a massive blow to universities, which receive vast sums from the Education Department and other agencies.
Three executive orders from the current and past administrations all make clear that Title VI bars any and all expression and practice of anti-Semitism, according to the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) definition of the term.
Those executive orders include a December 2019 executive order; a September 2023 White House statement; and Education Department letters issued in May and November 2023.
The Title VI laws are now being used by Jewish students facing the worst eruption of anti-Semitism on campuses since before World War II. Their many lawsuits seeking protection from anti-Semitic discrimination and Jew-baiting will test the government’s political will to enforce this 60 year-old Civil Rights law.
The epidemic of campus anti-Semitism has now cost three Ivy League presidents their jobs. The presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University all resigned after their testimonies before Congress revealed their moral confusion and poor leadership during explosions of Jew hatred at their universities.
Now, as preliminary rulings against Harvard and UCLA demonstrate, failure to address anti-Semitic discrimination on campus can lead to consequences far more damaging than the ousting of university presidents or the tarnishing of an institution’s reputation.
Allowing anti-Semitic discrimination to fester can lead to severe legal and financial penalties against universities that fail to uphold the Civil Rights laws as enshrined in Title VI.
In a fascinating historical footnote mentioned in the UCLA lawsuit, President George Washington in 1790 wrote to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island, which had sought assurances from him about the place of Jews in American society.
“May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land,” Washington wrote, “continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.”
“UCLA has grievously failed to live up to Washington’s promise that none shall be made afraid,” the lawsuit concluded. “But this Court can ensure that his promise—and, more importantly, the promises of the United States Constitution and civil rights laws—are kept.”
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Editor of Harvard Law Review Filmed Harassing Jewish Student Lands Top Job
In an especially disturbing incident in December, a Jewish student wearing a yarmulka was seen on video footage being surrounded and restrained by agitators blocking his path. The hooligans waved their kaffiyehs in his face and taunted him as the Jewish student tried in vain to get past them. He was jostled to the right and left until he lost his balance.
One of the miscreants caught on the video physically accosting the student was Ibrahim Bharmal, an editor on the Harvard Law Review. Bharmal and fellow student Elom Tamaklo were subsequently charged with two misdemeanors for assault and battery, and an FBI probe was launched into their bullying of the Jewish student, reported the Daily Mail.
Tamaklo was discharged from his position as a Harvard College proctor over his actions. Bharmal not only kept his position at the Harvard Law Review but landed a prestigious summer job in the Washington office of the Public Defender Service.
In April, New York Rep. Elise Stefanik sent a leader to Harvard’s leadership accusing them of ‘delaying justice’ against the students involved in the anti-Semitic confrontation, and stalling the FBI probe.
The incident was one of many that sparked outrage against Harvard for its alleged mistreatment of Jewish students and twisted handling of anti-Semitism amid the war in Gaza.
