Harvard University is facing a new lawsuit over the alleged harassment of Jewish students on campus, the latest in a cataract of legal challenges aimed at the nation’s oldest and richest university and other elite schools across the country.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court at Boston on Wednesday by the Brandeis Center and Jewish Americans for Fairness in Education, asserts that Harvard has violated its own policies as well as Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination based on race, color, or national origin. 

The complaint states that while Harvard allows student protesters to vandalize buildings and interrupt classes, supported by their professors, “Jewish students are bullied and spat on, intimidated, and threatened, and subject to verbal and physical harassment.”

The suit describes incidents that predate October 7, outlined in an earlier Title VI complaint Brandeis filed in 2023 against the university’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

“Harvard’s failure to address well-documented and admitted antisemitism is just dripping with arrogance, as if they believe that they are above the law and don’t need to comply with basic civil rights protections,” the founder and chairman of the Brandeis Center, Kenneth Marcus, tells the Sun. “It’s unfortunate that judicial intervention may be required to show them otherwise.”

In one example of harassment mentioned in the complaint, a copy of which was first obtained by the Sun, a Jewish student, wearing a blue bracelet in solidarity with Israel, was swarmed by protesters at a pro-Palestinian “die-in” on campus. They shouted “Shame! Shame! Shame!” and one protester hit him in the neck with his forearm. 

Two of the student protesters involved, Elom Tettey-Tamaklo and Ibrahim I. Bharmal, were each charged last week with two misdemeanors for assault and battery and with violations of the Massachusetts Civil Rights Act.

Mr. Marcus’s suit is the latest one against Harvard. In January, a Harvard Divinity School student, Alexander Kestenbaum, along with unidentified Harvard graduate students, filed a complaint with the university on claims of Title VI violations and a breach of Harvard’s contract. They are seeking the terminations of faculty and administrators who engage in antisemitic discrimination, disciplinary measures for students engaged in such conduct, and the retractions of donations “conditioned on the hiring or promotion of professors who espouse antisemitism.”

Political scientist Carol Swain is raising funds to file a federal lawsuit against Harvard University over claims that its former president, Claudine Gay, plagiarized her work. In a pitch for at least $100,000, she declares, “Help Heal Harvard’s Hubris.”

Harvard is also facing a Title VI probe by the Education Department for discrimination regarding antisemitism or Islamophobia. It is also being investigated by the House Education and the Workforce Committee, which found last week that the university failed to implement steps to crack down on antisemitism and its promise of protecting Jewish students is “all for show.” 

The involvement of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches represents a three-pronged approach that Mr. Marcus says “is necessary in light of the size of the problem, and of course the symbolic role of Harvard University.” Harvard did not immediately respond to the Sun’s request for comment on the new lawsuit. 

Asked by the Sun whether Harvard is being targeted symbolically, Mr. Marcus responded, “We would be filing this lawsuit regardless of the fame or prestige of the institution, given just how bad things have gotten there. The fact that it’s Harvard, though, suggests that they really do need to be taught a lesson, not only for the benefit of their own students, but also so that other universities will see.”

Columbia University faces at least three lawsuits on behalf of students in response to the pro-Palestinian protests that have taken root on the Harlem campus in recent months. The University of Pennsylvania was also sued in December by two students who allege the school has had an insufficient response to antisemitism on campus. The University’s motion to dismiss the complaint was denied by a district court in Pennsylvania on March 5, after two more students joined the complaint. 

The latest such lawsuit came on Monday against Northwestern University, which an anonymous student, represented by attorney Jonathan Lindenfeld, says has failed to protect Jewish students from antisemitic harassment. 

It’s not just higher education institutions that are coming under fire. The Brandeis Center is also suing the Berkeley Unified School District in California, where it claims Jewish and Israeli students as young as six years old are increasingly facing bullying and harassment. Mr. Marcus expects that at least one or more of these lawsuits, including the Berkeley case, will work its way up to the high court. 

“Jewish students have never faced this level of harassment, certainly in modern times, and so it’s appropriate that the pushback is as strong as it is right now,” Mr. Marcus says. “Harvard isn’t the only university facing a lawsuit, but there is no university that more richly deserves it.”