Several graduate and law students at Harvard University filed a federal lawsuit against the Ivy League school this week, accusing the administration of failing to protect Jewish students from antisemitic harassment on campus during the Israel-Hamas war.
The 79-page civil complaint, filed Wednesday in US District Court in Boston, alleges that antisemitism at Harvard has become especially “severe and pervasive” after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks against Israel, which killed about 1,200 people, with militants reportedly raping and torturing civilians. Israel retaliated with a bombing campaign and ground invasion that has killed more than 23,000 people in Gaza.
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“Harvard, America’s leading university, has become a bastion of rampant anti-Jewish hatred and harassment,” the complaint reads.
Only one of the six plaintiffs is named; Divinity School master’s degree candidate Alexander Kestenbaum.
The others are identified as members of Students Against Antisemitism, as is Kestenbaum. The other plaintiffs are enrolled at Harvard Law School and the T.H. Chan School of Public Health, according to the complaint.
A Harvard spokesperson said Thursday that the university has no comment “on pending litigation.”
The war in Gaza has sparked widespread demonstrations on campuses across the country.
Harvard in late October announced the formation of an antisemitism advisory group to craft a strategy for confronting antisemitism on campus.
Multiple Harvard students have faced disciplinary proceedings for their alleged actions during pro-Palestinian demonstrations, per reporting from the Harvard Crimson, the school’s student newspaper.
The lawsuit alleged that some protests at Harvard have included “vile” bigotry aimed at Jews and the state of Israel.
”Mobs of pro-Hamas students and faculty have marched by the hundreds through Harvard’s campus, shouting vile antisemitic slogans and calling for death to Jews and Israel,” the complaint read. “Those mobs have occupied buildings, classrooms, libraries, student lounges, plazas, and study halls, often for days or weeks at a time, promoting violence against Jews and harassing and assaulting them on campus.”
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Jewish students have also faced attacks on social media, and faculty members have “promulgated antisemitism” in their courses while dismissing and intimidating students who object, the students alleged.
Yet Harvard administrators refuse to discipline the perpetrators, according to the complaint.
“Harvard permits students and faculty to advocate, without consequence, the murder of Jews and the destruction of Israel, the only Jewish country in the world,” the complaint reads. “Meanwhile, Harvard requires students to take a training class that warns that they will be disciplined if they engage in sizeism, fatphobia, racism, transphobia, or other disfavored behavior.”
The lawsuit follows the resignation of Claudine Gay as Harvard president on Jan. 2. Gay stepped down amid outrage over her Dec. 5 testimony before a congressional committee probing campus antisemitism and a separate scandal involving plagiarism allegations.
During testimony before the GOP-controlled House Committee on Education & the Workforce, Representative Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican, asked Gay and the leaders of the University of Pennsylvania and MIT if calling for the genocide of Jews would violate their schools’ policies against bullying and harassment. The presidents’ legalistic and equivocal responses were widely criticized.
“Dr. Gay, at Harvard, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment, yes or no?” Stefanik asked Gay.
“It can be, depending on the context,” Gay said, adding that when “it crosses into conduct that amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation, that is actionable conduct, and we do take action.”
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The plaintiffs are seeking a court order demanding that Harvard take all necessary “corrective” steps including “the termination of deans, administrators, professors, and other employees responsible for antisemitic discrimination and abuse,” as well as the “suspension or expulsion against students who engage in such conduct.”
The lawsuit also seeks punitive financial damages to be determined at trial, among other forms of relief, according to legal filings.
Harvard hadn’t filed a response to the lawsuit by Thursday.
“It is clear that Harvard will not correct its deep-seated antisemitism problem voluntarily,” Marc E. Kasowitz, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said in a statement.
“Jewish students at Harvard are being subjected to vile and threatening antisemitic harassment and calls for the murder of Jews,” Kasowitz said. “Harvard must be forced to protect its Jewish students and stop applying a double standard when it comes to anti-Jewish bigotry.”
Travis Andersen can be reached at travis.andersen@globe.com.