Haverford College was founded in 1833, as a men’s college, by members of the Religious Society of Friends, more colloquially known as Quakers. According to the school, 98% of the 1,472-member student body live on campus, and the college claims a six-to-one tree to student body ratio. Full disclosure: I did some work on the Haverford campus in the early 2000s.

A liberal arts college, they are most definitely liberal, as they have proudly posted about their student body ‘diversity,’ telling us that the Class of 2027 is 52.5% “identify as people of color”. No mention was made concerning whether Rachel Dolezal was a student. 🙂

Haverford isn’t cheap, as tuition, fees, and housing for the 2024-25 academic year totals $89,568, though they also say that 49% receive some sort of financial aid, 44% receive outright grants, with the average grant being $62,237.

So, you’d think that Haverford College is an inclusive and welcoming place, right? The college certainly advertises itself that way! Unless, of course, you’re a Jooooo! From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Jewish Haverford students file lawsuit against Haverford College alleging antisemitism

The lawsuit describes a “history of antisemitism” at the liberal arts college where students have been vocal in calls for a cease-fire in Gaza.

by Maddie Hanna | Thursday, May 16, 2024 | 2:26 PM EDT

A group of Jewish students, faculty, parents and alumni at Haverford College have sued the school, alleging that it is discriminating against Jews by tolerating antisemitic speech and failing to support Jewish students amid an anti-Israel climate on campus.

Interestingly enough, the Inquirer chose to illustrate their story not with a pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas protest, but a counter-protest by supporters of Israel, though the protesters pictured appear to be rather too old to be Haverford students.

In a federal lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the group, called Jews at Haverford, accused leaders of the liberal arts college of applying a double standard to minority groups on campus. The group said the college violated the Civil Rights Act when it failed to condemn Hamas’ attacks on Israel, despite previously issuing statements pledging solidarity with other minorities, including after police killings of Black people.

The suit comes amid continued unrest on college campuses and in classrooms over the Israel-Gaza war. Schools across the country, including the University of Pennsylvania, where a pro-Palestinian encampment was disbanded by police last week, and Temple University have faced an uptick in federal complaints over allegations of antisemitism and Islamophobia since the Oct. 7 attacks.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights is investigating one such claim from a group of Jewish parents in Philadelphia accusing the Philadelphia School District of antisemitism at Masterman and other city schools, where students and families have clashed over the war in Gaza.

It’s a long story, and unless you are a subscriber to the Inky, you might get caught by the paywall if you’ve clicked on my Inquirer links too frequently. But my good friend and occasional blog pinch-hitter William Teach wrote about this as well, using the New York Post as his source:

When Jewish students sued Columbia people wondered if more would follow. Haverford is now in the crosshairs, and I hope Jewish students sue many more schools. Heck, even non-Jewish students should sue over the issues and threats at U.S. colleges

Jewish students sue Haverford University for creating a hostile environment

Students filed a lawsuit on Monday against Haverford College for violating the civil rights of Jewish students by creating a hostile environment toward Jews and for holding double standards on conduct against them compared to other ethnic and religious groups.

The suit filed to the Pennsylvanian Eastern District Court by five plaintiffs contended that the college administration had acted contrary to Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act by creating conditions in which Jewish students could not fully participate in classes and programming without fear of harassment.

Jewish students said that they could not speak Hebrew in public, engage in mannerisms that would identify them as Jewish and that they had to hide their beliefs and identities to avoid harassment. Haverford allegedly took no action to address the conditions of faculty and students that engaged in intimidation of Jewish students or for their support of terrorism.

The article lays out many, many, many of the issues cited in the lawsuit, such as tearing down Jewish linked posters, very negative statements, teachers celebrating the Hamas massacre of Jewish music festival attendees, and

Student groups repeatedly engaged in blood libel tropes. In late March, they held a class teaching how “Israel uses COVID[-19] as a tool for settler colonialism in Palestine” and “how the Israeli state intentionally debilitates Palestinians through the spread of COVID.” Haverford Students for Peace on May 9 published an Instagram post with bloody hands reaching for a donut entitled “Say not to blood donuts,” demanding that the college not purchase donuts for a commencement breakfast from Federal Donuts because the owner donated to Israeli causes.

The suit also mentions many instances of double standards, despite a clear policy that disallows hate speech and direct attacks on individuals and groups.

Another Haverford professor, Gina Velasco, allegedly posted on her Facebook page “F*** Israel” and “F*** Zionism,” but the suit notes that while action was not taken against anti-Israel professors, Haverford investigated tenured Jewish Israeli Professor Barak Mendelsohn for social media posts on the relationship between anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish attacks. (snip)

The suit alleged a trend of double standards in favor of some ethnic groups, while Jews and Israelis were disfavored. A January march in which it was alleged there were antisemitic slogans and calls for the state of Israel resulted in no repercussions for the students that attended it because it was off campus. Still, in the past, there were examples of Haverford revoking acceptance of the school after it had been discovered that an aspiring student had made anti-LGBTQ and anti-black statements on social media.

That last paragraph is amusing, because Haverford has its own website blurb about safe spaces! They very much want to create a “safe, inclusive, intersectional space open to folks of all genders,” but somehow, some way, Haverford has not created a safe enough space for Jewish students.

Would it be wrong of me to suggest that perhaps, just perhaps, Haverford College is more welcoming to homosexuals, transgenders, non-binaries, furries, and other such silliness than they are of Jews?

Ahhh, but then there’s the gobbledygook of intersectionality:

Intersectionality is an analytical framework for understanding how individuals’ various social and political identities result in unique combinations of discrimination and privilege. Intersectionality identifies multiple factors of advantage and disadvantage.^[1] Examples of these factors include gender, caste, sex, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, religion, disability, weight, species^[2] and physical appearance.^[3] These intersecting and overlapping social identities may be both empowering and oppressing.^[4][5] However, little good-quality quantitative research has been done to support or undermine the theory of intersectionality.^[6]

Intersectionality broadens the scope of the first and second waves of feminism, which largely focused on the experiences of women who were white, middle-class and cisgender,^[7] to include the different experiences of women of color, poor women, immigrant women, and other groups. Intersectional feminism aims to separate itself from white feminism by acknowledging women’s differing experiences and identities.

Jews, of course, do not deserve the courtesies of ‘intersectionality,’ because Jews, at least in Israel and the United States, have mostly escaped oppression and have been successful. They are generally seen as well-to-do in American society, and they have been not just successful, but conquerors in the Middle East. They have worked hard to become a part of the ‘First World,’ of Western civilization, the very thing that the left despise even as they partake of its wealth, education, and productivity. Like the guy sawing off the branch on which he’s seated, the left don’t seem capable of realizing that they are trying to undermine the very thing which has allowed them the culture, freedom, schools, wealth, and leisure to whine about oppression, while the truly oppressed, the vast majority living in Africa and in the Muslim countries — save for those in places like Kuwait, living off oil money — have to scratch out meager livings and risk their freedom and even their very lives to speak out on anything disapproved by their governments.

It’s not just the Jews, of course: there have been articles for years about Asian-Americans being a ‘model minority,’ ‘white-adjacent,’ because, like Jews, Asians in American society have mostly followed the same path, to work hard in school, to get the best grades, to win scholarships and admissions to the best colleges, and then work hard in college to get into the best graduate or professional schools, or get the best jobs upon graduation. The people who have, for the most part — obviously, not every Asian or Jewish person individually — done the right thing to be successful in a Western civilization nation have actually become reasonably successful, and the ‘intersectionalists’ hate them for it.

Why? After all, the ‘intersectionalists’ — is that really a word? — expect that everyone should have First Worls luxuries, wealth, and privilege, but they are utterly appalled that people are expected to actually work to achieve it. It’s easy enough to think that if a white male is successful, he was successful because he is a white male and the recipient of some kind of unearned privilege. But when Jews, who have been mostly on the outs in white Christian society, are successful, or Asians, who are visibly not white, are successful, it shows that you don’t have to be a blue-eyed person of northern European descent to succeed, and that blows up their entire mindset.

In her final paragraph in the originally cited article, Inquirer reporter Maddie Hanna wrote:

Among other actions, the lawsuit asks the court to order Haverford to ensure that students are protected from discrimination on the basis of their Jewish identity, “including those for whom Zionism is an integral part of that identity,” and that it be ordered to provide education about antisemitism “which includes the hostile treatment of Jews who believe in the centrality of Israel to Judaism.”

That last would anger the Usual Suspects no end, but is it really an unequal request? After all, colleges are certainly not discriminating against those who are chanting support for Hamas and the Palestinians to not just ‘liberate’ Gaza, Judea, and Samaria, but to take over the land “From the River to the Sea,” meaning all of Israel.