Harvard University administrators “blacklisted” Jewish students, whom it deemed “protesters” rather than “peaceful,” from an event in November 2023, according to documents filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
The document, which a lawyer for one of the students filed on Nov. 17, opposed Harvard’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed in July. The suit alleges that anti-Israel protesters attacked Yoav Segev, who recently graduated from Harvard, on Oct. 18, 2023—not even two weeks after Oct. 7.
Per the suit, Segev, who was then a Harvard student, was targeted for being Jewish. The university continued to victimize Segev by obstructing investigations into the matter and rewarding his alleged attackers, the suit alleges.
Segev’s lawyer alleges that when the student tried to register for the November 2023 event, Harvard staff at the registration table had separate lists for Jewish students who were “protesters” or “peaceful.”
“Harvard administrators told Mr. Segev and others who objected to Jewish blacklisting that it was ‘not a big deal,’” the filing alleges. (JNS sought comment from the university.)
“No one doubts for a second that Harvard would have taken swift, aggressive and public action to enforce its policies had the victim been one of Harvard’s ‘favored’ minorities,” the filing alleges.
JNS asked Mark Pinkert, a partner at Holtzman Vogel representing Segev, if there is documentation of the alleged lists of “peaceful” and “protesting” Jews. “We can’t share more than the public filings,” Pinkert said, of the ongoing lawsuit.
Harvard lawyers stated on Nov. 25 that “Mr. Segev’s allegations beyond the Oct. 18 incident are lacking” and that he is attempting to “sweep in a purported ‘overall environment’ of events that predate his time at Harvard or that he did not experience.”
One of those instances, which is cited in the Nov. 17 filing, is the allegation that Segev saw many antisemitic messages on Sidechat, an anonymous messaging application that is largely used by college students.
The university’s lawyers stated that Segev failed “to allege that Harvard was aware of these posts” and tried “to frame these statements as something they are not: personal harassment.”
“Mr. Segev has no factual response to Harvard’s argument that he does not identify a single lost educational opportunity,” the university claimed. It also said that Segev hasn’t proven that he was attacked for being “visibly Jewish.”
