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Harvard Alumni File Lawsuit Claiming Campus Antisemitism ‘Devalues’ Their Diplomas
[Illustrative] Harvard University students displaying a pro-Palestinian sign at their May 2022 graduation ceremony. Photo: Reuters/Brian Snyder
A group of ten Harvard University alumni filed a lawsuit against the institution on Wednesday, accusing it of “devaluing” their degrees through permitting and fostering an environment of antisemitism, support for terrorism, and anti-Israel sentiment.
Filed in a Massachusetts federal court, the alumni claims that Harvard has breached an implicit contract with its graduates, promising to maintain the institution’s prestige, which they allege has been compromised due to a toxic campus environment. This, they argue, has led potential employers and prestigious law firms to distance themselves from Harvard alumni.
“Harvard has directly caused the value and prestige of plaintiffs’ Harvard degrees to be diminished and made a mockery out of Harvard graduates in the employment world and beyond,” the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit argues that the university’s administration has failed to combat campus anti-semitism, and has consistently overlooked assaults on Jewish students and calls by students and faculty for the annihilation of Israel. It highlighted, among other things, an open letter signed by more than thirty student organizations blaming Israel for the October 7 Hamas-led attack, and campus protests which included chants like “Long live the intifada!” and “There is only one solution: intifada revolution!” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine is Arab!”
The suit also points to then-Harvard president Claudine Gay’s testimony before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, where she stated that calls for genocide against Jews would only violate bullying and harassment policies “depending on the context,” as indicative of the school’s tolerance of antisemitism.
The lawsuit is part of a growing dissatisfaction among graduates over what they perceive as rampant antisemitism on U.S. campuses, according to attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, president of legal aid group, Shurat HaDin, who is representing the alumni alongside New York-based lawyer, Robert Tolchin.
Darshan-Leitner criticized the colleges for becoming “hate centers” under the guise of academic freedom.
The lawsuit, Darshan-Leitner said, reveals the “growing outrage and contempt that graduates all across the US are feeling over the wild antisemitism and hate speech being encouraged and explained away on the American campuses.”
“This dangerous weaponization of higher education by radical faculty and students as well as the impotent administration response, all justified under the guise of academic freedom, has turned the colleges into hate centers which has greatly devalued their reputation and diplomas,” she said, adding that the suit could prompt similar actions from graduates of other institutions.
Tolchin accused the university of succumbing to “the flavor of the month, the lowest level of discourse.”
“Harvard’s seal proclaims “Light and Truth” in Latin and Hebrew–yes, Hebrew, the language spoken by the indigenous Israelites. Yet light and truth have been hard to find at Harvard. The darkness of antisemitism and the dishonesty, hate, and discrimination have cast a pall over Harvard so embarrassing that people do not wish to be associated with Harvard,” Tolchin said.
Harvard has been accused of facilitating an educational environment that is unwelcoming to Israelis and Jews for years, with the lawsuit citing annual events such as “Israel Apartheid Week” and incidents targeting Jewish students and symbols on campus.
Antisemitism expert Dara Horn, a Harvard alumnus who was asked to join Gay’s anti-Semitism advisory committee, authored a damning essay published this week in The Atlantic in which she detailed the Jew hatred on campus predating October 7.
She noted that staff members “who grade Jewish students used university-issued class lists to share information about events organized by pro-Palestine groups;” In one instance, a professor continued teaching after rejecting the findings of an investigation by Harvard after he was found discriminating against several Israeli students. Last spring, a student was asked to leave because her identity as an Israeli was making her classmates “uncomfortable.”
She also pointed to courses themselves “premised on anti-Semitic lies”, pointing to one called “The Settler Colonial Determinants of Health”, and noted that lecturers invited to speak at the campus included some who peddled in blood libels that Israelis harvest Palestinians’ organs or that the IDF uses Palestinian children for weapons testing.
“The mountain of proof at Harvard revealed a reality in which Jewish students’ access to their own university (classes, teachers, libraries, dining halls, public spaces, shared student experiences) was directly compromised,” Horn writes. The alumni’s legal action comes alongside another lawsuit filed by six current Harvard students on January 10, claiming that the university has not done enough to combat antisemitism on campus which had become a “bastion of rampant anti-Jewish hatred and harassment.” It also comes a day after a professor at the university, Walter Johnson, resigned from two anti-Zionist campus groups after they posted antisemitic cartoons.
The post Harvard Alumni File Lawsuit Claiming Campus Antisemitism ‘Devalues’ Their Diplomas first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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University of Toronto is granted an injunction to dismantle a pro-Palestinian encampment that has been on campus for two months
The University of Toronto has received an injunction to dismantle the pro-Palestinian encampment on its property. The 98-page decision from Justice Markus Koehnen of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice said that members of the encampment must take down the tents within 24 hours, by 6 p.m. on Wednesday, July 3. Toronto Police will have […]
The post University of Toronto is granted an injunction to dismantle a pro-Palestinian encampment that has been on campus for two months appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Jewish Cemeteries Vandalized in Cincinnati, Montreal
Vandals in Canada targeted a Jewish cemetery. Photo: Screenshot
Vandals have targeted notable Jewish cemeteries in Cincinnati, Ohio and Montreal, Canada, sparking outcry and concern over mounting threats of antisemitism.
Vandals at Montreal’s Kehal Yisrael Cemetery placed memorial stones in the shape of a Nazi swastika on top of tombstones. Ones with the last names Eichler and Herman were targeted in the antisemitic attack.
Placing memorial stones on graves is an ancient Jewish custom to memorialize the dead. Jewish cemeteries oftentimes have stones nearby tombstones for mourners.
Canadian leaders decried the vandalism.
“It is absolutely abhorrent and revolting to defile the dead with swastikas,” Jeremy Levi, the Jewish mayor of a Jewish-majority suburb of Montreal, commented on X/Twitter. “This desecration at the Kehal Israel cemetery in Montreal is beyond contempt. [Canadian Prime Minister] Justin Trudeau, step aside and get out of the way so we can reclaim our country. May this Kohen’s neshama have an Aliyah on high.” One of the tombstones vandalized belonged to a Kohen.
The leader of the Conservative Party in Canada’s parliament and candidate for prime minister, Pierre Poilievre, lambasted Trudeau and denounced antisemitism. “We cannot close our eyes to the disgusting acts of antisemitism that are happening in our country everyday,” he posted on X/Twitter. “The prime minister must finally act to stop these displays of antisemitism. If he won’t, a common sense Conservative government will.”
Canada, like many countries around the world, has experienced a surge in antisemitic incidents since the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’ massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7.
Meanwhile in Cincinnati, vandals targeted two historic Jewish cemeteries this past week, toppling and shattering ancient tombstones — some dating back to the 1800s.
According to a statement from the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati, 176 gravesites in Cincinnati’s West Side were ruined “in an act of antisemitic vandalism.”
“Due to the extensive damage and the historical nature of many of the gravestones, we have not yet been able to identify all the families affected by this act,” the statement continued. “Our community [is] heartbroken.”
The Cincinnati Police Department and the FBI are investigating the incidents.
The destruction of monuments is the latest in a greater trend of antisemitic vandalism. In an incident over the weekend, vandals in Australia targeted war memorials dedicated to Australian veterans who sacrificed their lives in Korea and Vietnam with pro-Hamas graffiti.
A couple weeks earlier, vandals in Belgium defaced two memorials for Holocaust victims with swastikas and a phrase calling for violence against Israel. In Germany, meanwhile, at least seven stolpersteine, or stumbling blocks in the sidewalk meant to mark Jewish homes seized by the Nazis, were defaced with the message “Jews are perpetrators.”
The US, Canada, Europe, and Australia have all experienced an explosion of antisemitic incidents in the wake of the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, and amid the ensuing war in Gaza. In many countries, anti-Jewish hate crimes have spiked to record levels.
According to the B’nai Brith, antisemitic incidents in Canada more than doubled in 2023 compared to the prior year.
The post Jewish Cemeteries Vandalized in Cincinnati, Montreal first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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UN Launches Probe Into Anti-Israel Rapporteur for Allegedly Accepting Trip Funded by Pro-Hamas Organizations
Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, attends a side event during the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, March 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
The United Nations has opened an investigation into allegations that its special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories accepted an all-expense paid trip to Australia from various pro-Hamas groups.
In November 2023, Francesca Albanese allegedly traversed around the Australian continent on a trip whose high price tag was covered by anti-Israel organizations, according to documentation acquired by UN Watch, a Geneva-based NGO that monitors the UN.
Albanese initially landed in Sydney and subsequently enjoyed flights into Melbourne, Adelaide, and Canberra, as well as Auckland and Wellington in New Zealand. The glamorous excursion is estimated to have cost a staggering $22,500.
The UN Investigations Division of the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) told UN Watch last week that it had alerted the High Commissioner for Human Rights of the allegations of financial impropriety levied at Albanese.
In a letter sent to UN leadership last month, UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer outlined evidence based on multiple sources indicating that Hamas-supporting organizations funded Albanese’s trip to Australia, which has been experiencing an alarming spike in antisemitic incidents since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October.
Australian Friends of Palestine Association (AFOPA), an organization that lobbies Australian politicians on behalf of the pro-Palestinian cause, claimed on its website that it “sponsored Ms. Albanese’s visit to Australia” to speak at its annual Edward Said Memorial Lecture in Adelaide. During the lecture, Albanese thanked AFOPA for “organizing such a busy visit,” in which she met with numerous Australian politicians and foreign ministry officials.
Free Palestine Melbourne (FPM) and Palestinian Christians in Australia (PCIA) both claimed to have “supported her visit to Victoria, ACT [Australian Capital Territory] and NSW [New South Wales].” Both groups also publicly declare that they participate in explicit lobbying of Australian politicians in an attempt to “change their minds” on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
While on her visit, Albanese served as a keynote speaker at a PCIA fundraiser. FPM encourages politicians to endorse the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to isolate Israel on the international stage economically and politically as the first step toward the Jewish state’s eventual elimination.
Australian Palestinian Advocacy Network (APAN) said it was “honored to support” Albanese’s visit. The organization’s president, Nasser Mashni, openly endorses the terrorist group Hamas and has stated that the eradication of Israel is necessary to secure “the liberation of earth.” APAN states that it “facilitated a range of meetings” for Albanese with Australian parliamentarians.
Palestinians in Aotearoa Co-ordinating Committee (PACC) and Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) both organized and likely bankrolled Albanese’s trip to New Zealand, according to UN Watch. At the behest of these groups, Albanese helped lobby a New Zealand sovereign wealth fund to divest from Israel-linked companies.
Albanese outright denied that her trip was funded by Palestinian lobbying organizations, insisting that the UN footed the bill.
“Yet another trail of egregiously false claims agst me,” she tweeted. “My trip to Australia was paid by the UN as part of my mandate’s activities. Continuous defamation agst my mandate may be well remunerated,but won’t work. It just wastes time that should be used to help stop violence in [the Palestinian territories].”
Albanese did not present any documentation confirming that the UN paid for her travel and accommodations. Rather, she pointed at a statement from AFOPA reading, “Ms. Albanese was authorized by the UN to accept AFOPA’s invitation to deliver the Edward Said Memorial Lecture. The UN funded Ms. Albanese’s travel & accommodation costs. No Palestinian Solidarity group paid for this trip.”
Albanese has an extensive history of using her role at the UN to denigrate Israel and seemingly rationalize Hamas’ attacks on the Jewish state.
In April, Albanese issued public support for the pro-Hamas protests and encampments on American university campuses, saying that they gave her “hope.” She has also repeatedly falsely accused the Jewish state of committing “genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza and enacting “apartheid” in the West Bank without condemning Hamas’ terrorism against Israelis.
In February, Albanese claimed Israelis were “colonialists” who had “fake identities.” Previously, she defended Palestinians’ “right to resist” Israeli “occupation” at a time when over 1,100 rockets were fired by Gaza terrorists at Israel. Last year, US lawmakers called for the firing of Albanese for what they described as her “outrageous” antisemitic statements, including a 2014 letter in which she claimed America was “subjugated by the Jewish lobby.”
Albanese’s anti-Israel comments have earned her the praise of Hamas officials in the past.
Additionally, in response to French President Emmanuel Macron calling Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel the “largest antisemitic massacre of the 21st century,” Albanese said, “No, Mr. Macron. The victims of Oct. 7 were not killed because of their Judaism, but in response to Israel’s oppression.”
Video footage of the Oct. 7 onslaught showed Palestinian terrorists led by Hamas celebrating the fact that they were murdering Jews.
Nevertheless, Albanese has argued that Israel should make peace with Hamas, saying that it “needs to make peace with Hamas in order to not be threatened by Hamas.”
The UN did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
The post UN Launches Probe Into Anti-Israel Rapporteur for Allegedly Accepting Trip Funded by Pro-Hamas Organizations first appeared on Algemeiner.com.