34 No. 74 JUSTICE students worked within their universities, bringing the issue to deans and administrators to attempt to solve situations on case-by-case scenarios. Some wrote op-eds about their experiences to expose public antisemitic activity, while others spoke out through documentaries about anti-Zionism devolving into harassment or discrimination against Jewish students. A steady stream of Jewish students regularly appear on news shows and even before the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce about their experiences on campus. Another subset of Jewish students has worked to combat anti-Jewish hatred on campuses by suing their universities for violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance. Using the courts as an enforcement mechanism, Jewish students have claimed that the universities have failed to safeguard their rights as a protected class because Judaism is defined as a race or national origin. This avenue became a realistic one to take in December 2019, after Adela Cojab sued her alma mater, New York University (NYU).3 During Cojab’s junior year at NYU, she served as president of Realize Israel NYU – a student group with the “mission to strengthen and promote support of Israel” – and Senator for Jewish and International Students on the school's University Senate. The Governance Counsel for Marginalized and Minority Students published a statement comparing Zionism to racism and Nazism, Cojab said. Two weeks later, the NYU Student Government presented a resolution to boycott the NYU Tel Aviv campus, and 53 student clubs signed a pledge to boycott Israel and groups affiliated with Israel, including Realize Israel. Over the subsequent months, Cojab met with administrators, asking for stronger support for Israel, as well as additional security for Realize Israel’s Israeli Independence Day event in Manhattan’s Washington Square Park, which was scheduled for April 2018. The celebration was attacked, with one NYU student setting an Israeli flag on fire, another shoving a student speaker, and others tearing Israeli flags to shreds. The New York Police Department (NYPD) arrested two students for property theft and damage, reckless endangerment, and assault and battery. Throughout this period, Cojab was cyberbullied and received countless threats and harassing statements on Facebook and group chats by members of the student government and NYU’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). One night, while Cojab was studying in the library, with her phone turned off, NYU security personnel came to find her out of concern for her safety. Another night, members of the student government board, of which she was a member, surrounded her in a manner that made her feel unsafe. Her friends located her on Snapchat and found her amidst a panic attack on the street. “Suddenly I couldn't even sit in class feeling safe. They came to literally fetch me from the library,” she described. Cojab stopped attending class for the last two weeks of her junior year and left NYU for a rehabilitation center to address an eating disorder and severe stress that accumulated over the year. The next year, Cojab – who had been studying Middle Eastern Studies and Arabic – opted for dance classes to avoid political science and history classes, structuring her schedule to minimize her time on campus. After NYU awarded their SJP chapter with the President’s Service Award, she decided that something needed to change. Faced with this decision, Cojab recalled a meeting with Kenneth Marcus, Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the United States Department of Education and founder of the Brandeis Center. Marcus moved the needle on fighting for Jewish students’ safety with the Marcus Doctrine, codifying the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism for Title VI purposes. But, Marcus said, “If Jewish students aren't filing complaints, I can't move.” His words rang in her ear, and she decided that she would file her complaint against NYU before her senior year ended. “You can always take a law enforcement approach, you can lobby the school to expel people, sure, but if you want the judicial approach, you have to actually file the complaints and take a judicial process. I realized real change was made through the law.” Her lawsuit wound up setting the precedent for all Title VI lawsuits to follow. In December 2019, Cojab spoke at the Israeli-American Council Annual Conference alongside President Trump, before he announced that discrimination against Jewish people would now be classified as a Title VI violation.4 “I really had no idea I would end up having a national impact the way that it did, and that every Jewish student would be protected,” Cojab said. “Let alone that four years later, that executive order would become the basis for every Title VI case 3. Kylie Ora Lobell, “Suing NYU: Fighting Antisemitism on Campus,” AISH (Dec. 10, 2023), available at https:// aish.com/suing-nyu-fighting-antisemitism-on-campus/ 4. Exec. Order No. 13, 899, 3 C.F.R. 339 (2019).
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