By Jonathan Stempel
NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York University (NYU) was sued on Tuesday by three Jewish students who accused the school of creating a hostile environment in which Jewish students are subjected to pervasive antisemitic hatred, discrimination, harassment and intimidation.
Bella Ingber, Sabrina Maslavi and Saul Tawil said in their complaint filed in Manhattan federal court that NYU has refused to enforce its own policies against bigotry, including by allowing chants such as “gas the Jews” and “Hitler was right.”
The plaintiffs said antisemitism had been a “growing institutional problem” at NYU even before the war between Israel and Hamas began last month, and has since gotten worse.
They also said Jewish students’ complaints are “ignored, slow-walked, or met with gaslighting” by NYU administrators, including new President Linda Mills, who they say falsely dismisses antisemitism on campus as overstated.
By allowing “the same anti-Jewish vitriol the Nazis propagated eighty years ago,” NYU has violated federal civil rights law and breached its duties to provide the education the plaintiffs expected when they enrolled, the complaint said.
NYU did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Mills became president in July.
The lawsuit seeks to require NYU to terminate employees, including administrators and professors, and suspend or expel students who engage in such abuse, and pay compensatory and punitive damages.
“NYU’s deliberate indifference toward the plight of its Jewish students under siege by egregious antisemitism has been outrageous,” Marc Kasowitz, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said in a statement.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
