Shabbos Kestenbaum, a Harvard Divinity School graduate who became a public figure as a fiery speaker at the Republican National Convention, on Thursday settled his lawsuit accusing Harvard of allowing antisemitism to fester on its campus.
The terms of the settlement are confidential, but in a lengthy statement, Mr. Kestenbaum said he was “so proud to help lead the student efforts combating antisemitism within institutions of higher learning across the country, including by suing my alma mater.”
He said that his lawsuit “drew the nation’s attention to the scourge of antisemitism at Harvard and other campuses, and it also caught the attention of President Trump and his Department of Education.”
Harvard released a statement saying that the university “and Mr. Kestenbaum acknowledge each other’s steadfast and important efforts to combat antisemitism at Harvard and elsewhere.” It said that both sides were “pleased to have resolved the litigation.”
In recent weeks, Harvard has gone to court to fight a Trump administration freeze on billions of dollars in federal research funding to the university. The freeze came after Harvard refused to comply with demands from the administration that Harvard do more to combat antisemitism — including by allowing the government to be involved in admissions, hiring and instructional decisions, among other things.
The litigation and his outspokenness made Mr. Kestenbaum the face of the Republican-led campaign against antisemitism in universities, and something of a polarizing figure on Harvard’s campus.
He graduated from the divinity school in May 2024, and in July he spoke at the Republican National Convention.
“My problem with Harvard is not its liberalism but its illiberalism,” Mr. Kestenbaum said in his convention speech. “Too often students at Harvard are taught not how to think but what to think. I found myself immersed in a culture that is anti-Western, that is anti-American and that is antisemitic.”
He has been in demand since then as a speaker for Jewish groups across the country.
In his statement following the settlement, Mr. Kestenbaum said he had campaigned with Mr. Trump because the president planned to hold universities accountable.
Mr. Kestenbaum, an Orthodox Jew, was a second-year divinity school student when the campus became the site of protests over the war in Gaza. Some Jewish students accused protests of veering into antisemitism, a charge that protesters, some of them Jewish themselves, have strongly denied.
In January 2024, Mr. Kestenbaum and five other Jewish students sued the university, accusing it of becoming “a bastion of rampant anti-Jewish hatred and harassment.” That case was settled the day after Mr. Trump’s inauguration.
Harvard agreed to take a number of steps, including adopting a strict definition of antisemitism.
But Mr. Kestenbaum refused to go along with the settlement and continued to litigate on his own, culminating in Thursday’s agreement.
Anemona Hartocollis is a national reporter for The Times, covering higher education.
The post Jewish Student Who Held Out in Lawsuit Against Harvard Agrees to Settle appeared first on New York Times.
