A Jewish student at Harvard University harassed by anti-Israel protesters. Photo: Screenshot

Harvard University on Monday asked a federal judge to dismiss an antisemitism lawsuit which alleges that administrative officials violated civil rights law when they declined to impose meaningful disciplinary sanctions on two students who allegedly assaulted a Jewish student during a protest held to rally anti-Israel activists just days after the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israeli communities.

According to The Harvard Crimson, the university’s lawyers contended that the Jewish student, Yoav Segev, has not backed his claim with evidence and that his grievance is founded not in any legally recognizable harm but a disagreement regarding policy.

“Mr. Segev’s allegation, then, is not that Harvard failed to take action, but simply that he disagrees with the actions taken after the investigation,” the university’s lawyers wrote in a filing submitted on Monday, adding that the school believes Segev’s contention that Harvard “conspired” to deny him justice cannot be substantiated.

As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Segev endured a mobbing of pro-Hamas activists led by Ibrahim Bharmal and Elom Tettey-Tamaklo, who stalked him across Harvard Yard before encircling him and screaming “Shame! Shame! Shame!” as he struggled to break free from the mass of bodies which surrounded him. Video of the incident, widely viewed online at the time, showed the crush of people shoving keffiyehs — traditional headdresses worn by men in the Middle East that in some circles have come to symbolize Palestinian nationalism — in the face of the student, whom they had identified as Jewish.

Nearly two years after the assault, Bharmal and Tettey-Tamaklo have not only avoided hate crime charges but also even amassed new accolades and distinctions — according to multiple reports.

After being charged with assault and battery, the two men were ordered in April by Boston Municipal Court Judge Stephen McClenon to attend “pre-trial diversion” anger management courses and perform 80 hours of community service each, a decision which did not require their apologizing to Segev even though Assistant District Attorney Ursula Knight described what they did as “hands on assault and battery.”

Harvard neither disciplined Bharmal nor removed him from the presidency of the Harvard Law Review, a coveted post once held by former US President Barack Obama. As of last year, he was awarded a law clerkship with the Public Defender for the District of Columbia, a government-funded agency which provides free legal counsel to “individuals … who are charged with committing serious criminal acts.” Bharmal also reaped a $65,000 fellowship from Harvard Law School to work at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an Islamic group whose leaders have defended the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s atrocities against Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023.

As for Tettey-Tamaklo, he walked away from Harvard Divinity School with honors, according to The Free Press, as the 2024 Class Committee for Harvard voted him class marshal, a role in which he led the graduation procession through Harvard Yard alongside the institution’s most accomplished scholars and faculty. Harvard did, however, terminate his serving as a proctor for freshmen students.

The US campus antisemitism crisis has kept Harvard University in the headlines.

Earlier this month it disclosed a $113 million budget deficit caused by the Trump administration’s confiscation of much of its federal contracts and grants as punishment for, among other alleged misdeeds, its admitted failure to combat antisemitism on its campus.

According to Harvard’s “Financial Report: Fiscal Year 2025,” the university’s spending exceeded the $6.7 billion it amassed from donations, taxpayer support, tuition, and other income sources, such as endowment funds earmarked for operational expenses. Harvard also suffered a steep deficit in non-restricted donor funds, $212 million, a possible indication that philanthropists now hesitate to write America’s oldest university a blank check due to its inveterate generating of negative publicity — prompted by such episodes as the institution’s botching the appointment of its first Black president by conferring the honor to a plagiarist and its failing repeatedly to quell antisemitic discrimination and harassment.

“Even by the standards of our centuries-long history, fiscal year 2025 was extraordinarily challenging, with political and economic disruption affecting many sectors, including higher education,” Harvard president Alan Garber said in a statement. “We continue to adapt to uncertainty and threats to sources of revenue that have sustained our work for many years. We have intensified our efforts to expand our sources of funding.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.