According to the Muslim Legal Fund of America, the allegations submitted Monday involve one of the very few complaints filed about a campus’ response to discrimination against Palestinians.
was “extremely disappointed” by the details of what the students endured.
“Harvard’s Palestinian, Muslim and Arab students deserve the same protections on campus as all other students,” Glover said.
Harvard declined to comment about the complaint, but Jason Newton, a school spokesman, provided a document detailing the resources it has put in place to support students. They include a Presidential Task Force on Combatting Islamophobia and Anti-Arab Bias.
In December, Harvard’s then-President Claudine Gay testified alongside University of Pennsylvania’s then-President Elizabeth Magill at a congressional hearing on antisemitism. The two equivocated when asked to denounce certain activists’ calls for the genocide of Jews on campus. The botched moments had major repercussions: Magill quickly resigned from her post, and Gay stepped down a few weeks later, her downfall fueled by accusations of plagiarism.
Just this week, the U.S. Department of Education settled an antisemitism complaint filed in June against a school district in Delaware. A Jewish student in the Red Clay Consolidated School District, the investigation found, had been harassed by her peers because of her identity, including with bloody imagery and messages accompanied by swastikas and a “Heil Hitler” salute.
The district’s responses to the behavior were “haphazard,” the civil rights office concluded, and school officials were ordered to reimburse the girl’s family for the cost of counseling and improved anti-discrimination training mandated for staff.