Illustrative: A detained anti-Israel demonstrator on July 19, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Isabel Infantes

The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law has asked a US federal court to allow a whistleblower of antisemitism at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) to pursue her lawsuit anonymously and avoid acts of retaliation which may await those who come forward to report civil rights violations against Jews in higher education.

The request comes as an amendment to a suit the Brandeis Center filed earlier this year after its client, Jane Doe, sought representation in a civil suit alleging that FIT allowed what the nonprofit has described as “one of the most alarming antisemitic environments on a campus.” According to the complaint, students there traded antisemitic tropes, allegedly charging that Jews “literally control our school,” calling on the student body to “punch a Zionist,” and denying a Jewish student the presidency of a club by citing his identity as the reason.

Meanwhile, school officials weaponized procedures for investigating discrimination by allowing anti-Zionists to filed politically charged complaints which reversed the roles of victim and perpetrator in order to create new ways of harassing Jews, the Brandeis Center said.

Jane Doe has asked for the chance to tell her story behind the protection of a pseudonym, a courtesy that would minimize the disruption of her life that being forced into litigation has already caused.

“We routinely hear from Jewish students and professionals who are too afraid to come forward publicly,” Brandeis Center founder and chairman Kenneth Marcus said in a statement. “They fear being doxxed, stalked, defamed, or ostracized — and without anonymity, many will simply remain silent. Courts must not allow antisemitism to chill Jewish voices seeking justice.”

He added, “By preventing victims from filing complaints anonymously, more Jewish individuals will be forced to abandon their civil rights rather than face potential consequences from their abusers. Our nation’s legal system was created to protect the most vulnerable populations.”

The Brandeis Center suit comes amid a worsening campus antisemitism crisis that continues to roil Jewish students, faculty, and staff across the Western world.

On Wednesday, members of Toronto Metropolitan University’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter led a mob that spilled blood and caused the hospitalization of at least one Jewish student after forcibly breaching a venue in which the advocacy group Students Supporting Israel had convened for an event featuring veterans of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

The former soldiers agreed to meet Students Supporting Israel to discuss their experiences at a “private space” on campus which had to be reserved because the university denied the group a room reservation and, therefore, security personnel that would have been afforded to it. However, someone leaked the event location, leading to one of the most violent incidents of campus antisemitism since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel sparked a surge of anti-Jewish hostility in higher education.

By the time the attack ended, three people had been rushed to a local medical facility for treatment of injuries caused by a protester’s shattering the glazing of the venue’s door with a drill bit, a witness, student Ethan Elharrar, told The Algemeiner during an interview.

“No one should have known where this event was, but they were setting up when a couple of girls with keffiyehs walked in yelling ‘baby killers!’ and ‘free Palestine!’” Elharrar said. ‘Then more started coming in, and then we closed the door trying to make sure no one could come in, and then these individuals in masks then began banging on the door and trying to open the door.”

“Our universities don’t care, and it comes down to our government, which won’t do anything about it,” he continued. “They don’t want to support us. I’ve had maybe a dozen calls with the human rights division at the university, and they told me specifically that they won’t help with anything having to do with Israel.”

According to a study released by the Combat Antisemitism Movement’s Antisemitism Research Center, there were 53 antisemitic incidents on college campuses in the month of September alone, a 178 percent increase over the previous month, when 19 were recorded despite students not being present on campus during the summer holiday.

“This surge reflects the resumption of the academic year and the persistent problem of antisemitism at colleges and university,” the report said. “In France, students at Sorbonne University in Paris discussed a targeted shooting attack against Jewish students at the school. In Argentina, students at the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba seized control of parts of the campus, protesting Israel’s ‘genocide’ of the Palestinians.”

The report added that the US saw 38 campus antisemitism incidents in September, several of which The Algemeiner reported.

In upstate New York, for example, law enforcement agencies filed hate crime charges against two Syracuse University students who they say forcefully gained entry into a Jewish fraternity’s off-campus house during Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and heaved a bag of pork at a wall, causing its contents to splatter across the floor. In Hanover, New Hampshire, an unknown person or group graffitied a swastika, the symbol of the Nazi Party, outside the dormitory of a Jewish student at Dartmouth College.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The Book of Exodus begins with a sudden shift in fortunes. Joseph, the Jewish leader who rose to power in Pharaoh’s court, dies. The Pharaoh who favored him dies. And then: “A new king arose who did not know Joseph.” What follows is not just a story of oppression and liberation; it’s a reminder that although values may be durable, political power is temporary. When we tie ourselves too closely to rulers rather than to enduring principles, we live at the mercy of their rise and fall.

That warning feels newly relevant. In the lead-up to the New York mayoral election, many rabbis around the country felt a powerful pull to speak publicly about the race. Following a recent IRS policy change that undermined barriers to clergy endorsements, some rabbis chose to sign open letters supporting or opposing candidates. Most did so out of a sincere sense of responsibility; after all, leaders are called to speak out when they fear their community is at risk. Many others felt torn about this kind of endorsement and wrestled with what moral leadership looks like in a moment of such political intensity.

Now that the votes have been cast and the ballots have been counted, it’s worth reflecting on what we’ve learned, and whether rabbis should embrace or avoid these kinds of endorsements in the future.

As the founder and Executive Director of A More Perfect Union, a nonpartisan organization mobilizing the Jewish community to protect and strengthen American democracy, here’s my take: Even though publicly supporting a particular candidate might feel urgent in the moment, endorsements cost us something essential. They oversimplify moral leadership. They divide communities. And they come with political pressures that erode trust and integrity.

First, endorsements flatten what should be nuanced and expansive. Rabbinic leadership involves a great deal of complexity. Rabbis wrestle with difficult questions, navigate complicated ideas, and make room for compelling arguments and competing truths in a world that is constantly changing.

It’s a tough gig.

But endorsements, by design, are binary. They elide complicated thought processes into a single, stark political statement, and erase the ability to emphasize values over individuals. No candidate is a perfect embodiment of our – or any – community’s views on all issues, and an endorsement can make it seem like a rabbi agrees with every part of a candidate’s views or platform, even if that’s not the case. As a result, rabbis can end up associated with ideas or individuals they never intended to support. When we align with individuals instead of ideals, we become vulnerable to their whims. Even if our chosen candidate is successful, they may change their minds on critical issues, or find themselves soon swept out of power. Values endure; leaders do not.

Second, endorsements divide the congregations rabbis are called to hold together. Even in an era when our communities tend to sort by ideology, synagogues are some of the last places where people who vote differently can still sit side by side – to celebrate, to mourn, to pray, and to search for meaning. Endorsing or opposing a candidate from the bimah risks turning that sacred space into one more battlefield in an already divided nation. It replaces curiosity with certainty, and leaves some feeling that their place in the community depends on how they vote. Our communities are too important, and rabbis’ responsibilities are too great, to compromise them with a single act of politics.

Third, endorsements invite political pressure and exploitation. Once clergy are seen as political actors, politicians will treat them as political assets. Synagogue donors, board members, and officeholders will begin to link support to public positioning. It’s easy to imagine a rabbi feeling pressured to publicly endorse a donor’s preferred candidate in order to secure funding for a food pantry or security needs. Whether that pressure is explicit or implicit, the potential for exploitation undermines moral leadership, casts doubt on rabbis’ motives, and makes it harder to serve the community with integrity.

Now, refusing to make endorsements doesn’t mean withdrawing from public life. Quite the opposite. Rabbis can – and must – speak to the moral dimensions of politics without becoming partisan actors. Rabbis can preach values without preaching partisanship. They can support those in need without supporting a particular campaign. They can model disagreement without division. They can create spaces for civic learning, honest dialogue, and pluralism.

Most of all, they can remind their communities through words and deeds that democracy itself is a moral achievement; one that allows us to keep talking, to keep learning, and to keep trying to get it right. They can speak up for enduring values – and not temporary pharaohs.

In the days following a hard-fought election, New York — and the rest of this country — will need voices of healing. We’ll need rabbis who can bring people back together across divides; who can remind us that belonging is bigger than partisanship and that our covenant with one another endures longer than any term in office. If we can remember that, we can reclaim something that feels radical in this polarized moment: the possibility of conversation, deliberation, and principled debate, even among those who disagree.

That, more than any endorsement, is what moral leadership looks like.

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