Suit was filed last week in a Pennsylvania federal district court by Jewish students as Haverford College alleging that the college has violated Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act by discriminatory application of its nondiscrimination policy and willful failure to enforce its nondiscrimination policy to protect Jewish students. The complaint also alleges breach of contract. The complaint (full text) in Jews at Haverford v. The Corporation of Haverford College, (ED PA, filed 5/13/2024), alleges in part:
Haverford has become an illiberal institution fixated on appeasing the demands of anti-Israel students and faculty. Haverford refuses to tolerate ideas about Israel that are at odds with its new political orthodoxy—in particular, the Jewish people’s ethnic, historical, shared ancestral and religious claims to their ancestral homeland in Israel. This intolerance is enforced through shunning of Jewish students committed to the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish state, and through the lauding and accepting of antisemitic student demands by Haverford’s President Wendy Raymond and her administration....
Haverford has violated Title VI by failing to protect the rights of Jewish Haverford students to participate fully in college classes, programs, and activities, without fear of harassment if they express beliefs about Israel that are anything less than eliminationist. In this pervasively hostile environment, Jewish students hide their beliefs, as well as their attendance at religious services or even secular events at which support for the existence of Israel is articulated or defended. While Israel-hating students march across the campus chanting quotes from the terrorist group Hamas calling for Israel’s destruction—as they have done frequently and without any restraint or interference from the Administration— these Jewish students hide in their rooms, feeling unable even to go to class or to engage in any of the other activities that constitute the life of an undergraduate....
The Deborah Project has more information on the lawsuit.
