MANHATTAN (CN) — Three Jewish students slapped New York University with a lawsuit Tuesday, accusing the private college of fostering a hostile double standard in which Jewish students are subjected to an “egregious” antisemitic “hate-fest” on campus.
In the month following the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas in Israel, the three NYU students — Bella Ingber, Sabrina Maslavi and Saul Tawil — claim NYU has refused to enforce its own nondiscrimination policies against bigotry, including by permitting on-campus demonstrations to devolve into “hours of genocidal chants" including "gas the Jews," “death to kikes” and “from the river to the sea," the latter a refrain calling for the annihilation of the state of Israel.
“NYU selectively enforces its own rules, deeming Jewish students unworthy of the protections it readily affords to non-Jewish students victimized by discrimination, harassment, and intimidation,” the plaintiffs say in their 83-page complaint.
According to the plaintiffs, some NYU faculty joined in with protesters’ pro-Palestine chants during a demonstration at the school’s Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, which they characterize as “endorsing the eradication of Israel and violence against citizens, including expressions of glee, approval, and admiration for Hamas’ Oct. 7 slaughter, rape, burning, torture, dismemberment and kidnapping of Israeli civilians.”
The plaintiffs say the university strung Jewish students along and “slow-walked” their complaints after they reached out to the administration for help dealing with the antisemitic hostility.
“Rather than implementing urgently needed protective and disciplinary measures to restore campus order and safety, these administrators gaslighted the Jewish students, insisting that their fears were exaggerated and that they should just call the Wellness Exchange, a hotline for students coping with emotional challenges,” the plaintiffs say in their complaint.
The students' claims include discrimination under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. They are represented by Kasowitz Benson Torres partner Mark Ressler.
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in any program or activity that receives federal funding or other federal financial assistance.
The students seeks injunctive relief in the form of an order requiring NYU to terminate employees, including administrators and professors, and suspend or expel students who engage in such abuse. They also seek compensatory and punitive damages.
Ressler told Fox News Digital on Wednesday that the firm plans to barrage other universities with similar antidiscrimination lawsuits under Title VI, including against Harvard, Cornell, Columbia, MIT, Stanford, University of Pennsylvania and University of California, Berkeley.
The plaintiffs say antisemitism had been a "growing institutional problem" at the Greenwich Village college before the war between Israel and Hamas began last month, and has since gotten worse.
“The horrific Oct. 7 attack thus lit a match to an already combustible antisemitic campus environment that NYU had created by tolerating and greenlighting antisemitic activity for years,” the plaintiffs say in their complaint.
A spokesman for NYU rejected the students' assertions in a statement Tuesday evening, and said the school has promptly reviewed and opened investigations into complaints of antisemitism and related misconduct.
The university "looks forward to setting the record straight, to challenging this lawsuit's one-sided narrative, to making clear the many efforts NYU has made to combat antisemitism and provide a safe environment for Jewish students and non-Jewish students, and to prevailing in court," the school said in its statement.
"NYU was among the first universities in the US to publicly condemn Hamas' terrorist attack on Israel," the school continued. "NYU maintains what is arguably the largest academic presence in Israel of any major U.S. university, our NYU Tel Aviv program, and has flatly rejected all calls to close it."
The school's representative said NYU has kept the community apprised of its efforts to ensure safety — including increased campus safety officer and NYPD presence — and about its expectations for proper conduct, and "about the fact antisemitism violates our rules and transgressors will face discipline."
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