I’m Suing Harvard for Violating the Civil Rights of Jewish Students: Shabbos Kestenbaum

American Thought Leaders

Following the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in Israel, universities throughout America experienced a sharp rise in hostility toward Jews.

“I have lost every single non-Jewish friend I had at Harvard—every single one,” said student activist Shabbos Kestenbaum.

A proud Orthodox Jew and a former self-described “die-hard liberal,” Kestenbaum endorsed Donald Trump and voted Republican for the first time in his life, believing that the Democratic Party had systematically abandoned Jewish Americans.

“As an Orthodox Jew, I grew up with the ideals of: You are an American and proudly so, and you’re Jewish and proudly so. The two were never contradictory. They were quite complimentary. ... They very much influenced each other. As I said in my speech at the Republican Convention, Jewish values are American values. American values are Jewish values,” says Kestenbaum.

Harvard University came under particular scrutiny for its failure to combat anti-Semitism on campus, ultimately leading to the forced resignation of its president, Claudine Gay. Today, Kestenbaum is suing his alma mater, alleging federal violations of the Civil Rights Act, under which, due to Trump’s 2019 executive order concerning Title VI, Jewish students are now protected.

“When we filed our lawsuit in mid-January, Harvard’s response was not to apologize. It was not to acknowledge the reality of anti-Semitism. It was not to tell us what they were going to do. They filed a motion to dismiss with prejudice, meaning they were asking a judge not only to toss out our lawsuit but to make it so that no other Jewish student in the future would be able to hold them accountable for anti-Semitism,” says Kestenbaum. “To this day, they have not articulated a single policy that would prevent what happened to me from ever happening again to any student, Jew or not.”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.