A university known for training American diplomats let an anti-Israel activist group operate out of its international affairs school, leading to rampant antisemitism on a campus where more than one in four students is Jewish, a lawsuit said.
Jewish students in May sued George Washington University in federal court for violating the Civil Rights Act and breach of contract, giving 180 pages of examples of shocking antisemitism on campus. The school allegedly refused to hold perpetrators accountable, misled Congress about it, and treated Jews differently from other minorities.
George Washington traded academic inquiry for activism when, in 2019, its Elliot School of International Affairs agreed to house the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), an activist group dedicated to boycotting Israel, the lawsuit said. That led to an explosion of activist professors and one-sided events at the school’s Washington, D.C., campus near the State Department, it said.
The suit comes amid efforts by the federal government designed to crack down on antisemitism and conduct detrimental to national security at American universities. “Because GWU accepts taxpayer money, it has a legal obligation under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to ensure that students of every race, color, and national origin enjoy their academic studies free from a hostile environment,” the suit said.
MESA “developed and disseminated programming deliberately designed to incite anti-Zionist hostility within the GWU community,” the lawsuit reads. “These activities were billed as legitimate academic inquiry, but they systematically suppressed intellectual diversity and ensured that students were not exposed to any pro-Israel perspectives or a full, accurate account of Jewish history,” it added.
George Washington purportedly cut ties with MESA in late 2023. But by then, its staff had blended with the Elliot School of International Affairs’ Institute for Middle East Studies (IMES), which hosted “unrelenting anti-Zionist and antisemitic events in the wake of the October 7th terror attacks.”
IMES faculty included William Youmans, associate professor of Media and Public Affairs and the Director of the Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication, who was a founding leader of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and publicly defended Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind behind the October 7 terror attack, the suit said.
It also included Ilana Feldman, a professor of Anthropology, History, and International Affairs, who was on MESA’s board and who tried to get an anthropology group to boycott Israel. Feldman “negotiated with the GWU Administration on behalf of” anti-Israel protesters who took over campus. She also led a panel where a MESA member said that recognizing that Israel is genocidal is a “litmus test to even be affiliated with Palestine study.”
Youmans and Feldman did not reply to requests for comment.
IMES partnered with the Middle East Research & Information Project, a group that described “the U.S. and Israel’s war machine on one side and the ‘Resistance Axis’ and popular anti-normalization movements on the other,” referring to Iran and U.S.-designated terror groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, the suit said.
After Hamas’ October 7, 2023, terror attack, IMES hosted a series of talks and refused proposals for pro-Israel academics to take part, betraying the idea that it is an academic group founded on open inquiry, the suit said.
“Every IMES event surrounding Israel has been, and remains, explicitly hostile toward Israel,” the suit said.
A week after the terror attacks, it hosted a panel about “Palestinian resistance groups,” using euphemism for Hamas despite it being designated a terrorist organization by the same State Department for which many George Washington grads will go on to work.
“During the panel discussion, IMES faculty members Ilana Feldman, Michael Barnett, and Arie Dubnov; MESA members Shay Hazkani and Laila El-Haddad; and IMES invitee Yousef Munayyer, all justified the October 7th attacks by Hamas, which included murders, rapes, and abductions, as legitimate acts of resistance in response to a foreign colonial regime,” the suit said.
The school began using students’ tuition to pay academics to try to convince Jews to betray their own religion, with IMES organizing events such as “The Colonizing Self” and screening the film “Israelism,” about two young Jews who discover that “the Jewish institutions that raised them not only lied, but built their Jewish identity around that lie.” Students were given extra credit to attend a screening of the film.
At an IMES event, MESA president Asli Bali claimed Jews had “ultra loyalty to a national imagined identity and participation in an imagined community.”
Campus-wide.
Antisemitism among George Washington faculty soon spread beyond IMES, the suit said.
“For instance, the GWU American Studies department sent a department-wide email to its students mobilizing them toward an anti-Israel ‘Freedom Seder’ that likened the Warsaw Ghetto uprising to Palestine Liberation efforts, specifically the release of Palestinian terrorists from Israeli prisons.”
George Washington’s Political Science Department gave an award to student Vidya Muthupillai, who “was featured on the website wearing a Keffiyeh, and whose bio publicly stated her intent to pursue a legal career as a ‘movement lawyer to protect and defend anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist, decarceral, and all communities fighting for liberation.’”
Its History Department’s social media account said of anti-Israel protesters, “History will absolve this movement and justice will prevail!” More than 100 George Washington faculty members signed a letter supporting anti-Israel students who unlawfully created an encampment in the campus square.
Psychology professor Lara Sheehi taught a mandatory diversity class where she assigned reading that referred to Jews as white supremacists, the suit said. She said it was not possible to be a good psychologist and a Zionist, called Israelis “genocidal f—ks,” and told a student, “It’s not your fault you were born in Israel,” the suit said.
Jewish students complained, but MESA defended Sheehi and faulted the students who complained, it said. An investigation commissioned by the school cleared Sheehi and instead resulted in discipline against the complainants, it said, until the Department of Education ordered it to undo that discipline.
Sheehi has since left George Washington to teach in Qatar, the nation that harbors the leadership of Hamas, the lawsuit indicated.
“Through the present day, entire GWU academic departments continue to sponsor and invite their students to anti-Israel events that distort Jewish history,” it said.
As recently as last month, a professor brought in a lesbian feminist guest lecturer who was Jewish to lecture on an unrelated topic, and a student took over the class and demanded that the lecturer denounce Zionism — with the professor siding with the student and apologizing for inviting a Jewish academic, the suit said.
The statue of George Washington at the university that bears his name , May 6, 2024. (Photo by Allison Bailey / Middle East Images via AFP)
“Hamas is me. Hamas is you.”
The suit also seeks accountability for George Washington administrators’ timidity in enforcing laws and rules after anti-Israel protesters took over central areas of campus for weeks.
On October 24, 2023, the school’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter projected “glory to our martyrs” on a library named after a Jew. The school suspended the SJP chapter, over the objections of MESA’s president, but it didn’t suspend its leaders, and they immediately began operating a different group with the same name.
Hundreds took over the central quad of campus for two weeks in April 2024, drawing borders that said “No Zionists” and “Settlers go back home, Palestine is ours alone.” So-called marshals identified Jewish students and forced them to leave, the suit said. The protesters did not seek to ascertain the political beliefs of these Jews, targeting them based solely on their religion, it said.
One of the first speakers was Osama Abuirshaid, the head of American Muslims for Palestine, who “has written articles for the website of Hamas’ military wing,” the suit said.
Protesters defaced the university’s statue of George Washington, and as Dean of Students Colette Coleman watched passively, one described that their goal was to weaken America, saying “when you destroy Zionism you really weaken the White House…Hamas is me. Hamas is you,” the suit said.
When a Jewish mother and father were visiting their child on campus, 40 protesters surrounded them and chanted “Zionists get out,” with one protester attempting to strike the mother, the suit said.
The group held noisy protests during finals week in violation of campus rules, but university administrators “capitulated” to protesters.
“A protest leader called out over a microphone: ‘Unless Dean Colette Coleman is here to meet our demands, get the f–k out of our liberation zone.’ She acquiesced and left,” the suit said.
At one point, students unfurled a seven-story-high Palestinian flag on a campus building. George Washington did not suspend the students responsible, but only put two on probation.
The protest later moved to outside of a residence hall, and Jewish students who had just finished taking exams were unable to return home “with nowhere to go and no one to protect them,” the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit said professors “openly encouraged these perpetrators by forgoing important class time to laud or even attend the protests,” with onetime IMES director Youmans saying “students enact what we teach” and professor Imani Cheers saying “liberation movements start with the young.”
“The faculty’s encouragement and indoctrination of students fueled the animus that led to the encampment on GWU’s campus,” with twenty to thirty faculty and staff linking arms to protect the protesters, the suit said.
Students broke through the barricades set up around their Gaza solidarity encampment by the university administration. (Photo by Allison Bailey / Middle East Images via AFP)
Double standards.
Students ruthlessly targeted incoming university President Ellen Granberg, leading the school to cancel her July 2023 inauguration ceremony due to “safety risk,” and holding it virtually instead.
Granberg directed Jews to avoid the main campus square instead of ensuring their safe passage, the lawsuit said, despite laws requiring federally-funded schools to take steps to end harassment and hostile environments.
“The irony here, of course, is that when students begged President Granberg to ensure their safety while on campus, she declined and instead instructed the students themselves to stay away from the threats permeating the University. When President Granberg herself became the subject of potential criticism or harassment, she capitulated to the very students promoting hostility—rather than holding them accountable for their threats and disruptive conduct,” the suit said.
When Granberg and other administrators ventured near the encampment, they were protected by a squad of police officers. Still, Granberg said the university didn’t have the resources to bring the protesters to heel, the lawsuit said. If it “lacked the resources to maintain order, GWU should have tapped a tiny fraction of its $2.5 billion endowment and hired officers and security,” it said.
Granberg claimed that George Washington could take no action against anti-Jewish protesters unless it was something that “the FBI would arrest someone for,” despite protests routinely violating D.C. law and university rules.
But George Washington took swift action in 2019 against microaggressions deemed insensitive to black students, including suspending all sorority activities after one sorority member made an off-color joke about a plantation. One professor was driven off campus after he requested permission from students to read a historic text with the n-word, even though he did not say the word.
The university suspended only a single student despite months of antisemitic unrest, according to the lawsuit.
“GWU’s double standard (punishing hate directed toward all groups except Jewish and Israeli students) underscores the legal and moral violation,” the suit said. “It promptly investigates discrimination against minorities other than Jews and Israelis, and then metes out serious discipline to offenders.”
The only advocates for Jews at George Washington have been congressional Republicans. The suit said the university gave Congress false information about its response to antisemitism.
For example, on November 15, 2023, shortly after Hamas’ October 7 terrorist attack, a student threw a rock at a truck that said “JewBelong,” shattering its glass. George Washington found the student responsible, but did not suspend or expel him. It falsely told Congress the truck was a “doxing truck,” the suit said.
A Jewish student studying Arabic and Hebrew Language and Culture said on October 7, other students, including SJP President Lance Lokas, “stared, laughed, and pointed at her in a taunting fashion in front of the professor, who said and did nothing.” Lokas later allegedly spat at the student, who filed a report against him but was told by GW administrators that they would not pursue discipline, the suit said. GW falsely told Congress the case was closed because it was a case of mistaken identity, the suit said.
A George Washington spokesman said in a statement that “We take the concerns of the students who filed the lawsuit extremely seriously. We condemn antisemitism in the strongest terms and have taken, and continue to take, robust action to support our Jewish and Israeli students and community.”
