Columbia University is facing a civil rights lawsuit from a group of current and former students and employees who 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.
Investigations by Columbia’s Office of Institutional Equity
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.
Allegations of unequal treatment and viewpoint discrimination
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.
The lawsuit alleged the IHRA definition subjected the plaintiffs to “false accusations of antisemitism” and created “a pervasive climate of fear and self-censorship with respect to their academic work.”
As a result, they suppressed or modified their research, coursework and collaborations with colleagues “out of a well-founded fear of being subjected to OIE investigation and institutional discipline,” the lawsuit said.
Alleged doxxing, harassment and unanswered calls for help
The plaintiffs also allege the university failed to support students who faced repeated doxxing campaigns by individuals employed or affiliated with Columbia that targeted Palestinian students and employees. Their requests for aid and intervention were often met with radio silence from administrators, according to the lawsuit.
One plaintiff, 2025 graduate Maryam Alwan, sought university support amid repeated doxxing and harassment by Columbia affiliates, according to the lawsuit. Many of her emails to university officials went unanswered, the lawsuit alleged.
However, multiple administrators reached out with offers of support shortly after she was interviewed by CBS News about her experiences on campus, according to the lawsuit. But when she followed up, her requests for aid were again ignored, it alleged.
Meanwhile, Alwan faced half a dozen disciplinary investigations and actions, five of which were eventually dismissed or lifted, the lawsuit alleged. The last investigation, opened by OIE after she graduated, put her on “conditional disciplinary probation” over the emails she sent administrators describing the on-campus harassment she had faced, according to the lawsuit.
Plaintiffs allege Columbia didn’t take formal action on doxxing soon enough.
While Columbia announced a doxxing task force in November 2023, it did not adopt a formal anti-doxxing policy until March 2025. But the new policy did not apply retroactively, leaving students who had been targeted during the intervening months in the lurch, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit argues Shai Davidai, previously a Columbia business professor, was one of the driving forces behind the harassment they faced and the doxxing of their information.
During his time at Columbia, Davidai, an Israeli citizen and vocal critic of pro-Palestinian demonstrators, often criticized protesters by name on social media.
Columbia opened an investigation into Davidai’s actions in February 2024. And that October, it temporarily revoked Davidai's access to campus after he “repeatedly harassed and intimidated University employees,” a university spokesperson said at the time. His status and pay as an active faculty member did not change during that time.
But Columbia abruptly closed the case the following summer and did not share its findings, the lawsuit said.
Davidai ultimately left the university in July 2025.
On Tuesday, Davidai called the lawsuit “lie-riddled” and part of “an anti-Jewish, anti-Israeli, and anti-American campaign” being waged by the plaintiffs.
“I have never doxxed anyone, and I never would,” he said on social media. “I urge the plaintiffs, who clearly harbor a personal grudge against Jewish and Israeli members of the Columbia community, to look up what that word actually means.”
Monday’s lawsuit argues that the plaintiffs suffered from PTSD, panic attacks, difficulty sleeping, nightmares, significant weight loss and hospitalization as a result of the doxxing and harassment campaigns.
Bahia Munem, a former lecturer at Columbia’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, ultimately resigned two years before the end of her contract amid institutional indifference to protracted harassment, the lawsuit alleged.
“A scholar who had been recognized, promoted, and extended by Columbia was forced to leave the institution she had served for four years because Columbia refused to protect her,” it said.
Undue influence from Trump and federal lawmakers?
Columbia has faced an enormous amount of public scrutiny, both as the cradle of the pro-Palestinian student encampments that erupted in spring 2024 and for its handling of the backlash.
The plaintiffs alleged that outside political influences, including federal lawmakers and President Donald Trump, improperly influenced how Columbia responded to pro-Palestinian protests and harassment of Palestinian students.
In August 2024, the House Committee on Education and Workforce, then chaired by Rep. Virginia Foxx, called on Columbia to turn over troves of internal documentation related to antisemitism on campus.
The university voluntarily turned over information, including student disciplinary records, as well as files on closed and ongoing investigations, “in violation of Columbia’s own policies and applicable privacy protections,” the lawsuit said.
Columbia also failed to properly redact the disciplinary files, “leading to the unlawful disclosure of their personally identifying information,” according to the lawsuit.
It argues these records were protected by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, under which colleges cannot share a student’s educational records without written consent.
