A federal judge on Thursday dismissed a discrimination lawsuit filed against Harvard by a former student, who had accused the university of acting with indifference to his complaints about campus protesters who he said had harassed him because he is Jewish.
Judge Richard G. Stearns of the Federal District Court in Boston said that Yoav Segev, who sued the university soon after completing his master’s program at Harvard Business School, “has not shown that he experienced severe and pervasive racial harassment.”
Mr. Segev’s complaint dated back to a well-publicized episode on campus in October 2023, when he was a student, during a “die-in” protest on the grass in front of the business school. Two weeks after the Hamas attack on Israel, tensions were high, and hundreds of pro-Palestinian students laid on the ground pretending to be dead to protest Israel’s incursion in Gaza.
Mr. Segev, who is Jewish and a citizen of the United States, Israel and Canada, according to his lawsuit, walked through the protest holding a camera phone. Video of the protest showed that he was quickly surrounded by other students, who yelled “shame!” and tried to block his camera lens with scarves. They formed a scrum, jostled him and forced him to leave.
Videos of the confrontation drew thousands of views on social media. Republicans in Washington and some prominent Harvard alumni criticized the university’s handling of the encounter.
In his complaint, Mr. Segev said that he was “physically assaulted by an antisemitic mob,” and that he was yelled at “for being Jewish and Israeli.” Mr. Segev had accused Harvard officials of refusing “to take any reasonable action” to punish the students involved or offer Mr. Segev any redress.
The lawsuit also accused the university of conducting a “sham investigation” of what happened. It was the key remaining civil case against Harvard related to its handling of pro-Palestinian protests on campus.
Two protesters in the encounter with Mr. Segev were charged with misdemeanor assault and a hate crimes violation, though the charges were later dropped.
In his ruling, Judge Stearns wrote that “while the court does not condone an assault on a follow student by campus protesters,” nothing in Mr. Segev’s complaint “plausibly supports the notion that his assailants’ conduct was motivated by race-based antisemitism.”
A spokesman for Harvard declined to comment Thursday evening.
Lawyers for Mr. Segev did not immediately return messages seeking a comment.
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