Columbia faces discrimination lawsuit from Palestinian employees and students

Plaintiffs allege the Ivy League institution instead “actively participated in and amplified” racial and political targeting of its campus members. Columbia University is facing a civil rights lawsuit from a group of current and former students and employees w ho allege the Ivy League institution “acted with deliberate indifference” toward the harassment of Palestinians on campus . In a complaint filed Monday , the plaintiffs allege Columbia, rather than intervening, “actively participated in and amplified the racially, ethnically, and politically motivated targeting of Palestinian students, staff, and faculty.” The plaintiffs are asking the New York County Supreme Court to intervene, as well as award them damages. Columbia has faced repeated complaints over its handling of allegations of discrimination and harassment. In February, the university settled a lawsuit filed by Jewish students who alleged Columbia wasn’t doing enough to respond to antisemitism. And last summer, it agreed to numerous, wide-ranging policies from the Trump administration to end civil rights investigations into antisemitism on its campus and restore its federal research funding. The university on Wednesday declined to comment on pending litigation. Many of the plaintiffs’ concerns center on Columbia’s Office of Institutional Equity, which the university created in August 2024. Campus members soon began to be notified by OIE that they were under investigation, even though the conduct in question constituted “protected speech and lawful advocacy,” such as op-eds urging divestment from Israel, the lawsuit alleges. OIE required students and employees who faced accusations of discrimination to sign nondisclosure agreements to see the evidence against them or speak with officials investigating them, the lawsuit said.

That policy “operates to suppress the speech of Palestinian community members who are disproportionately subjected to OIE investigation, and to prevent them from seeking support, legal counsel, or community assistance in connection with those proceedings,” according to the lawsuit. Evidence in many of the disciplinary investigations opened against Palestinian students and employees was markedly thin, the plaintiffs allege. In October 2024, OIE told Layla Saliba, one of the plaintiffs and a 2025 graduate of Columbia’s social work program , that she was being investigated over allegations of discriminatory behavior. But the “investigation was initially premised on an opinion piece on Palestine that Saliba did not write,” according to the lawsuit. Even so, the office expanded their probe to include “her published writing, her social media, and her communications as a student leader,” the lawsuit said. OIE cleared Saliba seven months later but kept a hold on her transcript that prevented her from sending it to potential employers or applying to graduate school, according to the complaint. The lawsuit also alleges Columbia engaged in viewpoint discrimination and unequal treatment through its uneven response to pro-Palestinian groups and anti-Palestinian harassment on campus. Columbia suspended two pro-Palestinian campus groups — Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace — over campus demonstrations. Doing so while allowing other student organizations engaged in advocacy “to operate without comparable restriction” demonstrates the divide, the lawsuit said. It also pointed to the university’s creation of an antisemitism task force and what it described as Columbia’s “deliberate refusal” to establish a similar body for Palestinian campus members.

The antisemitism task force, the lawsuit alleges, ultimately perpetuated anti-Palestinian harassment. Initially, the antisemitism task force “resisted defining the term ‘anti-Semitism’ in any principled or legally coherent manner,” it said. The task force eventually recommended that Columbia adopt a formal definition by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. University leaders then used it to conflate criticism of Israel and Zionism with antisemitism, the lawsuit argues. IHRA’s definition says criticism of Israel “similar to that leveled against any other country” does not constitute antisemitism. However, its examples of antisemitism include comparing “contemporary Israeli policy” to Nazi Germany. While the definition is favored by some Jewish advocacy groups and the Trump administration , some free speech and civil rights groups argue that it includes protected speech critical of Israel and its policies. Kenneth Stern, the lead drafter of the definition and head of Bard College’s Center for the Study of Hate, has frequently spoken out against its use to enforce antidiscrimination laws on campus, saying it could be misapplied to restrict classroom instruction and discussion.

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