Jewish students at Columbia are taking to the courts, claiming that the university is failing to keep them safe from the antisemitic pro-Palestinian protests that have been roiling the campus in recent months, culminating in the takeover of an administration building last week.

The plaintiffs contend that Columbia is failing to protect its Jewish and Israeli students from bias-related abuse, harassment, intimidation, and discrimination. They claim it violates Columbia’s own policies, as well as the Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination in federally funded activities. 

It’s not just Columbia. Across the country, universities are set to face both legal and political struggles ahead as Congress pledges to hold them accountable for the anti-Israel protests on campuses in recent months. Leaders have been called to testify before the House education committee later this month. House Republicans contend that Columbia and other schools are violating students’ civil rights protections, and the secretary of education, Miguel Cardona, suggests that this could jeopardize their federal funding.

Columbia faces at least three lawsuits. To a degree the cases overlap, but each offers a different legal take on the crisis gripping the Ivy League campus. The most recent lawsuit is by an unnamed female student in her second year at Columbia, C.S., who demands that Columbia uphold its own policies and promise to establish an educational environment free of harassment and discrimination.

That suit, in federal court at the Southern District of New York, is seeking monetary compensation from Columbia and ultimately, a change in its conduct. “We have one goal,” attorney Jay Edelson, whose law firm is representing the student, tells the Sun, “to ensure that the campus is safe for all of its students.” His firm specializes in class action suits.

Asked why the Columbia student in that lawsuit, C.S. v. The Trustees of Columbia University, requested anonymity, Mr. Edelson said, “There’s a violent element in these protests on and off campus that’s so significant that Columbia conceded that it couldn’t keep students safe. The student reasonably thought that she might be subject to harassment, threats or worse if she proceeded publicly.”

The total number of students who will be participating in the lawsuit is not yet clear, but the complaint filed in federal court says that, during the litigation, more potential student plaintiffs will be identified.

The student leading the suit is doing so on behalf of “all current students at Columbia University who have switched to online learning on or around April 24, 2024.” That is when protests sent the campus into near-total lockdown, the complaint notes. More than 36,000 students are enrolled at Columbia.

“Columbia has admitted that its students are violating school policies and the world has seen the unfathomable calls for violence by the extremists currently holding the campus hostage,” Mr. Edelson says. “It has spent months trying to appease these radical elements and it has only emboldened them.” The case is due for a hearing on Tuesday. 

An example of what’s been shouted by protestors on campus in the last couple of weeks is cited in the suit: “Never forget the 7th of October. That will happen not one more time, not five more times, not 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000. The 7th of October is going to be every day for you.” 

The lawsuit is one of several against the Ivy League institution, which has been struggling to manage a wave of protests, including an unsanctioned encampment that surfaced on campus two weeks ago, in the aftermath of Hamas’ attack on Israel and the Jewish state’s war of self-defense. 

Columbia’s leadership called upon the New York Police Department to intervene on Tuesday night, leading to the arrests of more than 280 people who had broken into and occupied a university building.

“We have made it clear that the life of campus cannot be endlessly interrupted by protesters who violate the rules and the law,” Columbia said in a statement Tuesday night. A spokesman for the university, Ben Chang, declined the Sun’s request for comment on the lawsuit.

The chaos on campus has prompted at least two other cases against the university’s leaders. A student at the School of Social Work, Mackenzie Forrest, who is an Orthodox Jew and Sabbath observer, claims in a suit filed in February that the campus turned “virulently hostile” after October 7 and that she “was forced out of a specialized academic program simply because she is Jewish.”

That case, Forrest v. Trustees of Columbia University, and another filed in February, Students Against Antisemitism, Inc. v. Trustees of Columbia University, say the university is failing to meet its obligations under the Civil Rights Act. They are seeking to require Columbia to change its policies and to compel the university to pay compensation to the students.

“The university’s behavior has been absolutely shameful in not reigning in this horrendous discriminatory and harassing behavior by protestors,” the attorney who represents the plaintiffs in the Students Against Antisemitism case, Marc Kasowitz, tells the Sun. 

“We’re seeking court orders that require the university to protect their Jewish students the same way they protect other groups of students, consistent with the university’s own code of conduct,” Mr. Kasowitz says. 

“The result of that will be to provide an environment, an educational social environment for Jews where they can participate freely without fear of intimidation or harassment and enjoy the kind of college experience that every other student gets to enjoy. We’re asking for nothing more than that.”

Two attorneys representing Columbia in the Students Against Antisemitism case did not respond to the Sun’s requests for comment.  Columbia, in any event, has asked twice to combine the separate cases into one court matter.

Attorney Roberta Kaplan, on behalf of the Columbia trustees in February, said that allowing the Forrest and Students Against Antisemitism cases to proceed separately “would almost certainly result in a substantial duplication of effort and expense for the Court, the parties, and any witnesses, and would likewise raise a serious risk of subjecting Columbia to conflicting orders.”

The court denied that request in February. Mr. Kasowitz asked the court this week to deny a similar request, arguing that his case is based on alleged civil rights violations. The C.S. case, he argued in a letter to the court, is “a putative class action asserting a breach of contract claim on behalf of a purported class consisting of ‘all students.’”

As for the C.S. case, if the court grants the plaintiff’s requests after the Tuesday hearing, it would then consider whether to require the university to fulfill the demands laid out in the lawsuit, like providing security escorts for Jewish students to get to class safely. 

“If there are students who’ve been forced to get a hotel room for the last number of months or last few weeks or something,” Mr. Kasowitz says, “that’s a cost that is directly attributable to what the university has done in breaching its obligations to these Jewish students.”