(July 23, 2025 – Palo Alto, CA) – On July 22, 2025, StandWithUs and Co-Complainant Zahava Feldstein, a Jewish graduate of Stanford University Graduate School of Education, submitted a filing to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. The submission is a supplement to Co-Complainant’s federal Title VI civil rights complaint against Stanford University for enabling a hostile environment for Jews, including the intimidation, marginalization, and discrimination of Jewish students. In the face of Stanford’s apathy, Zahava was forced to withdraw from the prestigious doctoral program entirely and obtain a Master’s Degree instead. 

The supplemental filing requests that OCR open an investigation into Co-Complainant’s allegations, and take the necessary steps to ensure that Stanford finally meets its federal obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. This includes making an official statement that recognizes Zionism as an integral component of Jewish identity for most Jewish people, that affirms Stanford’s commitment to protecting the rights of Jewish students on campus, and that unequivocally condemns antisemitism in all its forms. The filing also requests, among other remedies, that OCR require Stanford’s Title VI Office to provide information on its website and in mandatory staff trainings about mainstream Jewish identity, including the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism. The filing further requests that Stanford’s Title VI office create and abide by policies and procedures to ensure that Title VI investigations are conducted in a timely fashion. 

“At Stanford, I became the target for my doctoral classmates by virtue of my proud Jewish identity–not my politics,” said Co-Complainant, Zahava Feldstein. “I am a scholar of ethnic studies, critical race theory, and Jewish history. I agreed with my classmates on so many baselines for understanding the world, meaning the harassment I faced wasn’t about my politics – it was about my Jewish identity. Unless I was willing to advocate for the murder of Jews in the process of ‘decolonizing Palestine,’ I would never be allowed into their social justice collective. The antisemitism I experienced while enrolled at Stanford was a fusion of ancient stereotypes with modern progressive language, repackaged through social justice discourse. And Stanford lacked the will to name it, prizing moral performance over factual literacy.”

Contents of The Supplement and University Response

The supplement describes the manner in which Stanford students used instructional time intended to examine race and inequality in education to raise one-sided charges about Israeli policies and complex geopolitical matters—all in a manner clearly targeting the Co-Complainant because of her Jewish identity. Zahava reported multiple instances where classmates incongruously shifted the focus of class—including wholly unrelated topics—towards anti-Israel misrepresentations.

For example, during a discussion about early childhood development in America, students spent class time making false accusations about supposed Israeli “control” over United Nations spending. Even worse, when Co-Complainant tried to engage in these discussions and offer her own personal and academic experiences on nuanced Jewish identity and the complex Israeli-Palestinian conflict, she was met with outright ostracism. Simply standing in front of the class—as the only Jewish person in the room—and presenting a project about educational pedagogy, with absolutely no reference to Israel or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Zahava was told she reminded her classmates of “settler colonial violence” and “genocide.” Confirming her understanding that her classmates’ rhetoric was specifically aimed at her, as a Jew, Co-Complainant reported that her classmates barely spoke about Israel, Palestine, and related matters unless she was physically present in the classroom.

The supplement further describes the ways in which Co-Complainant’s professors and advisors exacerbated her marginalization in the classroom and in the pursuit of her doctoral degree. After Zahava shared the experiences of contemporary Jewish fear, pain and trauma, one professor responded by reducing her to being a white person in a position of power. During a conversation with another professor about feeling uncomfortable in the classroom because of the treatment of her Jewish identity, she was told to talk about other topics so that her classmates would like her more.

Zahava’s Withdrawal from the Doctoral Program

Despite Co-Complainant’s repeated requests for the hostile antisemitic environment to be addressed, the school took no action to protect her as a Jewish student being targeted based on her protected identity. In the face of Stanford’s apathy, Zahava was forced to withdraw from the prestigious doctoral program entirely and obtain a Master’s Degree instead.

The only official response from the university was an internal investigation report —shared with Co-Complainant only after she had already been forced to withdraw. Remarkably, the investigators found that it was “understandable” that Co-Complainant felt “particularly isolated and vulnerable” in the program as the “only self-described Jewish student” but concluded that Zahava’s peers only treated her “differently” because of her expressed views and not her Jewish identity.  The report does not name these “expressed views.” Nor does it address at all the myriad ways in which faculty and administrators exacerbated the hostile environment for Co-Complainant.

“This is a particularly egregious example of the type of hostility toward Jewish identity that devalues and utterly disregards individual background, beliefs, and experiences in favor of false narratives and harmful stereotypes,” said Carly Gammill, Director of Legal Policy at StandWithUs Saidoff Law. “Stanford lost a brilliant scholar from its program by failing to comply with even the bare minimum obligations under Title VI. We hope that OCR will require the changes that are necessary to ensure Jewish students at Stanford are able to openly express their identities in the educational setting without experiencing hostility and harassment.”