Harvard’s Antisemitism Problem

A lawsuit spotlights the school’s failure to discipline campus offenders

WSJ editorial. 

"The antisemitism that engulfed college campuses last spring is now working its way through the courts. Parents and alumni who care about the degraded integrity of their institutions might want to follow the cases.

One to watch is against Harvard in federal district court in Massachusetts. The suit alleges the school has tolerated antisemitic conduct on campus despite a non-discrimination policy that is rigorously enforced for other legally protected groups. The student plaintiffs say Harvard’s inadequate effort to protect Jewish students violates Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

The case was brought with the help of the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and Jewish Americans for Fairness in Education. The complaint describes examples of antisemitism on campus and Harvard’s reluctance to discipline offenders.

The details are troubling. Last spring two Harvard students assaulted a Jewish business-school student walking across campus. The assault, in which one student hit the Jewish student across the neck, was caught on video. The alleged assailants, Elom Tettey-Tamaklo and Ibrahim Bharmal, were charged with assault and battery by the Suffolk County district attorney. Their arraignment hearing was postponed for the third time this week.

Despite the charges and video evidence, Harvard let the students remain on campus without disciplinary action, beyond the temporary removal of Mr. Tettey-Tamaklo as a freshman proctor. Former Harvard President Claudine Gay, who lost her job after disastrous Congressional testimony on Harvard’s response to antisemitism, said school policy is to await the result of a criminal investigation before taking disciplinary action.

That’s a strange policy since any number of events on campus might require discipline without the courts being involved. In any case, the complaint charges, Harvard has thwarted the criminal investigation whose resolution it claims to be awaiting.

Assistant Suffolk County DA Ursula Knight has said “Harvard police essentially refused to investigate.” The Boston Globe reported Monday that Ms. Knight says her assault investigation is being repeatedly delayed. “The Commonwealth’s in this position,” she said, “only because Harvard has not done their job.”

In a second incident cited in the complaint, Jewish students at the Kennedy School in the spring proposed a project related to their Jewish identity and democracy in Israel. Classmates objected that the idea of a “Jewish democracy” was “offensive” and posed in a class photo wearing keffiyehs. Professor Marshall Ganz likened the existence of a Jewish state to “white supremacy” and told students that linking “Jewish” and democracy “creates an unsafe space.”

The real unsafe space is Harvard for Jews. When the school commissioned an outside investigation of the incident, the report concluded that the students faced “a hostile learning environment” that “denigrated” them “on the basis of their Israeli national origin and Jewish ethnicity and ancestry.” Harvard says it has taken “personnel action” but hasn’t elaborated. It issued no public reprimand or discipline.

The standard for a Title VI violation is “deliberate indifference” to a hostile educational environment. Harvard says it hasn’t been indifferent as it brought in outside investigators on the Ganz case and is waiting for the criminal case to conclude. The school says complaints about the pace of the school’s reprimands for the student attackers don’t rise to the legal standard of indifference.

That’s a dubious defense of callous administrative behavior. As for the legal standard, bring on discovery when the plaintiffs will get access to emails and Harvard’s internal decision-making process. Stay tuned."