JEWS AT HAVERFORD SUE HAVERFORD COLLEGE

Jewish students at Haverford College have sued in federal court in Philadelphia charging the school with maintaining — and even supporting — a hostile environment for Jews. The lawsuit also charges that Haverford breached its contract with the plaintiffs by failing to follow its own written policies, thereby preventing Jewish students from being able to fully engage in the educational opportunities for which they pay tuition. The students are represented by The Deborah Project, a public interest law firm that defends the civil rights of Jews in education.

The lawsuit reveals that Haverford has two separate sets of discrimination policies, one for ugliness against Jews in which every statement, poster, protest and chant is deemed protected by Free Speech, and the other for any perceived nastiness towards other minorities, in which case protecting the feelings of the hurt parties become paramount.

Antisemitism has long been a problem at Haverford College. But the atrocities of October 7 were the predicate for a year-long campaign of hatred and vitriol directed at Israel and any Haverford student with the temerity to reveal a commitment to the Jewish state, to the Jewish commitment to Zionism, or to Jewish religious observance. And that campaign itself was honored, protected, and praised by the highest levels of Haverford College administration.

Haverford’s Jewish community has sought repeatedly to engage the college’s administration, beseeching them to support the Jews on campus who were being harassed, hounded, or shunned, at official campus events, in class, and throughout the campus, with denouncements, posters, sit-ins, teach-ins, rallies, protests and encampments, all quoting Hamas’s genocidal rhetoric, and labeling anyone who failed to support a ban on Israeli self-defense as “racist genocidaires,” supporters of apartheid, colonialism, and land theft. College President Wendy Raymond told Jewish students that the atrocities of October 7 should be understood as “people” – the Hamas murderers – “breaking free from their chains.”

Jews at Haverford seek injunctive relief to remedy the hostile environment that makes it impossible for Jews to participate as full members of the Haverford community, or even to walk safely on the College Green. They seek compensatory damages for the many tens of thousands of dollars they and their parents have paid in tuition, when they have been denied the educational experience, they were promised. Most importantly, they seek a Haverford College that applies all of its policies to Jews as it applies them to all other groups – a school where all people, including all Jews, are accorded “trust, concern and respect.”

Please click Amended Complaint to see the full complaint and exhibits.