NYU faces a lawsuit over hate speech. The Israel war opens a new American battle | Kelly

Three college students recently filed a lawsuit in federal court in New York City. This is no small event. Consider it the first salvo of a new American battle.

At issue is hate speech. And the first words of this 83-page lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in lower Manhattan, tell us much about the stakes here: “The age-old virus of anti-Semitism is alive and well.”

The target of this legal action is New York University, a respected bastion of academic liberalism and a much-acclaimed social, political and cultural centerpiece of Manhattan’s uber-liberal Greenwich Village. But this battle is about to expand — dramatically so. More colleges will likely be sued — and rightly so.

What is happening with America's beacons of free expression?

Colleges are designed to be landscapes of free speech. In America, we call this “academic freedom.” And campuses are supposed to be safe places where people can exchange divergent views — even engage in strident debates.

This tradition is one of the cornerstones of the top-flight American university system. It’s why so many students from oppressed nations, run by tinhorn dictators, want to come here to study. Simply put: If you want to explore a subject that may not be popular in your home country, you can probably find an American university that will open its doors to you.

But what has taken place recently on far too many campuses is worrisome, especially in the wake of the devastating terror attack in Israel on Oct. 7 by the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Sadly, on many American college and university campuses, those attacks are not being universally condemned. In some instances, they are actually celebrated or diminished, their horror camouflaged by equivocation that masquerades as someone's idea of historical context. As a result, you don’t need to be Jewish to understand that far too many campuses have become threatening, even hostile.

Earlier this month, I spent portions of three days on the campus of Cornell University, which is snuggled amid the rolling hills at the base of New York’s bucolic Finger Lakes region. Bad things are not supposed to happen in such a seemingly peaceful place.

But the FBI has already arrested one Cornell student for reportedly threatening to murder Jews. Jewish students told me they fear wearing jewelry that features the Jewish Star of David. A campus police car had to be parked outside the kosher dining hall so students could eat in peace. By the way, did I mention that Cornell is supposed to be an "elite" university?

It’s worth noting that Muslim students at Cornell also said they have been targeted. That’s wrong, too — and far too many college administrators refuse to acknowledge that.

But the rise of antisemitism across America is a barometer of the worst that can come. As many historians — Jewish and non-Jewish — correctly note, widespread bigotry for other groups begins with antisemitism for the Jews. Exhibit A in this sad narrative is Nazi Germany.

NYU will likely be just the first to face allegations of antisemitism

It’s not surprising that Cornell is already on a list of colleges that may be targeted with lawsuits, using federal civil rights laws as a basis for their legal claims. And, as one of the NYU lawsuit’s attorneys, Marc Kasowitz, noted in an interview with me, NYU is just the first on a list of more than a dozen colleges that will likely end up in court battles. All this is taking place amid a dramatic rise in antisemitic incidents, according to a variety of law enforcement sources.

For now, however, the focus is on New York University. And a central claim of the lawsuit is nothing less than explosive — namely, that NYU has “created a hostile educational environment” where Jewish students “have been subjected to pervasive acts of hatred, discrimination, harassment and intimidation.”

Imagine, paying tuition and fees at NYU that amount to almost $70,000 a year and worrying that your child may be targeted for antisemitism? Facing that sort of consumer-focused concern, you can't blame parents -- or anyone -- for wondering about the management of a university like NYU. It's basic common sense.

The lawsuit says NYU routinely refuses to enforce campus anti-bigotry policies and has allowed anti-Israel protests to evolve into “hours of genocidal chants” that include calls such as “gas the Jews,” “death to kikes” and an increasingly common refrain, “from the river to the sea,” which is a coded phrase that essentially means the eradication of the state of Israel.

Kasowitz is hardly a novice when it comes to big-time court fights. He represented Donald Trump amid the investigation of whether Russia interfered with the 2016 Trump presidential campaign. Kasowitz also represented Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly, who lost his job amid allegations that he sexually harassed women.

But the NYU case is especially personal and significant, said Kasowitz, who is Jewish and a graduate of Cornell Law School.

“It is, to our knowledge,“ he said, “the first time that students are in a robust way challenging the inaction by the administration of a major university in failing to protect an entire group of people because of their ethnicity.”

More Mike Kelly: At Cornell, how did the debate on the Israel-Hamas war nearly turn violent?

Other lawsuits — from Hillel, the ADL and elsewhere — are brewing

Can Kasowitz prove this? That remains to be seen. But already, other attorneys are lining up to file lawsuits.

In early November, Hillel International, the Anti-Defamation League, Brandeis University and the powerful Gibson Dunn law firm set up a hotline to offer free legal advice to Jewish students who said they faced antisemitism. The ADL is already predicting multiple lawsuits against colleges. In addition, donors are already threatening to withdraw support to colleges — including Rutgers University.

Not surprisingly, NYU firmly rejected the students’ claims in the lawsuit. Expect the same from other colleges that may be sued. Millions of dollars are at stake — in court settlements and donations.

In a statement, NYU said it "looks forward to setting the record straight, to challenging this lawsuit's one-sided narrative.”

NYU also insists it “was among the first universities” to publicly condemn the brutal Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, which left 1,200 people dead and more than 200 taken as hostages. And finally, NYU wants to remind everyone that has a satellite campus in Israel and has “flatly rejected all calls to close it.”

All this sets up an epic court battle, with students taking the witness stand to speak about how they feel harassed and university administrators countering that they are trying to walk a fine line in which they promote academic freedom yet also set up guidelines to prevent Jews and other ethnic groups from feeling insulted.

The problem here ought to be obvious. One person’s idea of free speech can sometimes be another’s insult. And in far too many cases, one side simply does not understand how one or two words can be deeply hurtful.

More Mike Kelly: He lost his dad in terror attack. Bergen man proud his daughter fights in Israeli army

The dispute is trickling down to suburban high schools

That’s essentially the center of a dispute now raging in New Jersey at the proudly diverse Teaneck High School, where pro-Palestinian students circulated a flyer recently for a protest march citing what they called “genocide” by Israel against Palestinians. For many Jewish students, the use of the term “genocide” conjured up age-old, deeply ingrained feelings of antisemitism. The pro-Palestinian students seemed blissfully unaware of this, however. The same is true for many pro-Palestinian university students who toss the word “genocide” into their statements as if it were just another form of punctuation. Do they actually understand how their words may hurt Jews?

Likewise — and this also needs attention — many anti-Palestinian protesters, in their zeal to criticize the murderous actions of the Hamas terrorists, have deeply insulted some Muslims. As one Cornell student told me: “Both sides seem to be talking past each other.”

That’s not surprising, frankly. These are deeply emotional days. People’s souls ache. What Hamas did to Israel on Oct. 7 was much more than mass murder. It resurrected some of the most horrific memories of the Nazi Holocaust.

Sadly, far too many pro-Palestinian supporters ignore that. Few Muslim leaders — even amid the relative safety of America — have dared to publicly criticize Hamas. Likewise, few ardent supporters of Israel have stepped forward to criticize its brutal bombing of the Gaza Strip.

Maybe that will change in the coming weeks. What’s striking about these days, however, is the lack of common ground, even at colleges.

The battles of the Middle East have now arrived here in America.

We’ve already seen what this has done to far too many colleges.

Now the fight extends to the courtroom. It won't be the last battle.

Mike Kelly is an award-winning columnist for NorthJersey.com, part of the USA TODAY Network, as well as the author of three critically acclaimed nonfiction books and a podcast and documentary film producer. To get unlimited access to his insightful thoughts on how we live life in the Northeast, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: kellym@northjersey.com

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: With antisemitism on rise, NYU lawsuit shines light on hate speech