Kasowitz Files Title VI Suit on Behalf of StandWithUs Center for Legal Justice
(New York — February 21, 2024) The law firm Kasowitz Benson Torres today filed a federal lawsuit against Columbia University and Barnard College on behalf of Jewish and Israeli Columbia students who are victims of egregious and ongoing antisemitism. The complaint, filed in the Southern District of New York on behalf of StandWithUs Center for Legal Justice (SCLJ) and others, seeks injunctive relief and monetary damages concerning Columbia’s alleged violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and indifference to a pervasively hostile climate for Jews and Israelis.
The lawsuit details antisemitism at numerous schools at Columbia University, including Columbia’s School of General Studies and the Columbia School of Social Work and at Barnard College. It alleges that students have been physically assaulted, spit on, threatened, and treated unequally. Despite existing policies that are supposed to protect Jews and Israelis, Columbia has failed to act, denying students the education and opportunities that they are entitled to obtain at Columbia without regard to their shared ancestry, national origin, or religion.
“Students at Columbia are enduring unprecedented levels of antisemitic and anti-Israel hate while coping with the trauma of Hamas’s October 7th massacre. By partnering with SCLJ, we will ensure that Columbia University is held accountable for their gross failure to protect their Jewish and Israeli students,” said Roz Rothstein, StandWithUs CEO and Co-Founder.
“Columbia refuses to enforce its policies or protect Jewish and Israeli members of the campus community,” said Yael Lerman, Director of StandWithUs Center for Legal Justice. “Columbia has created a pervasively hostile campus environment in which antisemitic activists act with impunity, knowing that there will be no real repercussions for their violations of campus policies. Our aim in being a plaintiff in this lawsuit is to hold Columbia accountable under Title VI for blatant failures to live up to their obligations under federal law and to compel Columbia to restore its campus to the safe environment for Jewish students that existed over twenty-five ago.”
The complaint also claims that Columbia breached its contractual relationship with plaintiffs when Jewish students enrolled at Columbia and paid tuition, expecting that Columbia would enforce its policies pertaining to harassment, intimidation, and discrimination.
Read the complaint HERE, and act through this public petition .
The complaint’s examples of antisemitism at Columbia include:
Columbia refuses to enforce its own policies to protect Jewish students:
Columbia utilizes a double standard in addressing antisemitism:
Columbia teaches a curriculum that promotes antisemitic worldviews and intentionally ignores the existence of antisemitism:
Columbia’s President Shafik downplays antisemitism, enabling a climate of antisemitism:
Columbia campus police do not protect Jewish students:
Columbia awards discriminatory, antisemitic student leader:
As the Title VI complaint states , “Columbia has permitted endemic antisemitism to exclude Jewish and Israeli students from full and equal participation in, and to deprive them of the full and equal benefits of, their educational experience at Columbia, and has invidiously discriminated against them by, among other things, failing to protect them in the same way Columbia has protected other groups—all based on their race, ethnicity, religion, and/or national origin. That Columbia has done so for many years and continues to this day further confirms that it has responded with at best deliberate indifference, that Columbia cannot be left to its own devices, and that its response has been clearly ineffective and clearly unreasonable.”
The Title VI complaint further states , “Columbia must now be compelled to implement institutional, far-reaching, and concrete remedial measures. Columbia must also pay damages to plaintiffs—who have been robbed of their college and graduate school experience—to compensate them for the hostility they have been forced to endure as a consequence of Columbia’s unlawful conduct.”
About the StandWithUs Center for Legal Justice
StandWithUs Center for Legal Justice (SCLJ) is a tax-exempt membership organization that partners with StandWithUs, a nonprofit education organization dedicated to supporting Israel and combating antisemitism. Comprised of students in K-12 and college, professors, and community members, SCLJ enhances StandWithUs’ mission through impact litigation and other legal actions. Learn more at www.swulegaljustice.org .
