UPenn, Harvard students suing to put schools ‘in uncomfortable spotlight’ over antisemitism

“Antisemitism has gone from a problem to a crisis, and now it’s just gotten to a point where there is no business as usual. If you’re a Jew at one of these schools, then you have to do something,” Eyal Yakoby, a 21-year-old student at the University of Pennsylvania, told The Post.

Yakoby is among a wave of students now suing their universities alleging antisemitism.

Penn, Harvard and NYU have all been slammed with lawsuits claiming that the schools failed to protect Jewish students from harassment following the October 7th attacks on Israel, in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

“Even before this semester, there were always incidents of antisemitism. But this semester is when I think most students realized that it wasn’t isolated incidents but a systemic problem,” Yakoby said.

He and fellow Penn student Jordan Davis filed their lawsuit in December, alleging that the Ivy League school had “transformed itself into an incubation lab for virulent anti-Jewish hatred, harassment and discrimination.”

Yakoby says the “turning point” that made him take action came in November when Penn’s Jewish student center was targeted with bomb threats and failed to inform students inside.

“Students like myself were in the Hillel dining hall during an active bomb threat,” the Princeton, New Jersey, resident recalled. “We were just sitting there with bomb sniffing dogs walking around the building.

“You can only describe [the school’s response] as ignorance or indifference to a very serious threat on campus.”

A similar lawsuit was filed last week against Harvard University, which alleges the school “selectively enforces its policies to avoid protecting Jewish students from harassment … and ignores Jewish students’ pleas for protection.”

Shabbos Kestenbaum, a 25-year-old master’s student at Harvard Divinity School, is one of six student plaintiffs.

The Riverdale, New York, resident was thrilled when he was accepted to study the interaction of public policy and religious communities, but later shocked to find his dream school was actually a bastion of antisemitism.

“When I got accepted two years ago, I was overjoyed. I can’t really articulate how happy I felt. And then to contrast that with how bitterly disappointed and abandoned I feel currently is … well, I also can’t exactly articulate it either,” Kestenbaum told The Post.

He says his two years at Harvard have been marred by swastikas on campus, online student forums filled with antisemitic tropes, and inflammatory student protests.

In December, Kestenbaum said, he had to relocate his studies to avoid the school’s Widener Library when hundreds of pro-Palestinian student demonstrators occupied the building.

“I wasn’t able to go into the Widener Library because I’m visibly Jewish. I wear my Kippah and my ritual fringes every day, and I didn’t want there to be any confrontations,” he recalled.

Kestenbaum and his classmates are asking for the expulsion of students and the firing of faculty who engage in antisemitism. They are also seeking damages for “diminished educational opportunities.”

“Words can’t express my sense of betrayal, my disappointment, my anger. This sense of abandonment is really palpable, and it’s been detrimental not only to my mental health but to my academic career,” Kestenbaum said.

Although he says the lawsuit was a “last resort,” Kestenbaum is hopeful it will make a difference for future Jewish students.

“I think this will create real change,” he said. “This will put Harvard under an uncomfortable spotlight, but nevertheless a spotlight that they deserve to be under, so we can examine the root causes of this antisemitism and so we can institute real reform.”

For Yakoby, who is studying political science and modern Middle Eastern studies with the goal of being involved in the peacemaking process in the Israeli-Palestine conflict, the December congressional testimony of the presidents of Penn, MIT and Harvard was shocking.

“The entire hearing showed the wild indifference and lack of moral clarity that all three presidents possess,” he said.

Especially upsetting to him was former Penn president Liz Magill’s claims that she was upholding students’ free speech.

“It’s interesting to me that Penn used free speech as the grounds of why calling for the genocide of Jews doesn’t violate the code of conduct. But if you just look at Penn’s track record, they limit free speech all the time,” Yakoby said.

“At this point, you’ve made your bed, now you have to lie in it. You can’t pick and choose when you’re limiting speech and when you’re not limiting speech. You set a precedent. It’s your fault.”

Yakoby is a dual citizen of the United States and Israel, where his family currently lives. He says his family has reached out to him in the wake of October 7th to check on his wellbeing at school even more than he has reached out to them.

According to Yakoby, the recent explosion of antisemitism is emblematic of a pervasive and corrosive ideology on campus.

“I think many elite institutions have been commandeered by an ideology of double standards, an indifference to certain types of hatred, and not pushing students to think critically but to think as a mafia of professors do,” he said.

As the spring semester nears, both students are returning to campus — but cautiously.

Even though Kestenbaum’s mother urged him not to go back for fear of his physical safety, he’s determined to do so.

“I do not look forward to coming back to Harvard, but I’m going back,” he said. “I have every right to be there. The problem is not me. The problem is anti-Semites, and why should I be penalized for their bigotry?”