A group of pro-Palestinian Harvard students have filed a civil rights complaint alleging school administrators failed to protect them from “rampant harassment and racist attacks, including doxxing, stalking and assault.”
The latest problem for the Ivy League school's leadership comes as one of its biggest donors, billionaire Ken Griffin, announced that he had stopped funding the school in the wake of recent scandals.
Griffin, who started trading in his Harvard dorm room before becoming the most profitable hedge fund manager of all time, told an audience at the Managed Funds Association conference in Miami on Tuesday that he has paused donations for now.
“No… And I made that clear to the board members,” Griffin said when asked if he still supports his alma mater financially.
In addition to the new complaint, Harvard is still under investigation by the Department of Education over allegations that it became a “bastion of rampant anti-Jewish hatred and harassment” following Hamas's brutal attack on Israel on October 7.
Billionaire investor Ken Griffin has decided to suspend his donations to Harvard over the school's handling of anti-Semitism on campus amid the Israel-Hamas war
Accusations of a soft stance on anti-Semitism and allegations of plagiarism led to the resignation of Harvard President Claudine Gay in January
“Students at Harvard University have been subjected to rampant harassment and racist attacks such as doxxing, stalking and assault simply because they are Palestinians, Muslims and advocates for Palestinian rights,” the new complaint states
That scandal, in addition to the plagiarism allegations, led to the resignation of the school's first black president, Claudine Gay, in January.
A lawyer representing the pro-Palestinian students, Christina A. Jump, told the Harvard Crimson this week that she has been told stories of “harassment, discrimination and intimidation based on being Palestinian, Muslim or Arab.” or to be allies to their Palestinian fellow students.'
Jump is director of civil litigation at the Muslim Legal Fund of America.
“For months, students at Harvard have been subjected to rampant harassment and racist attacks, including doxxing, stalking and assault, simply because they are Palestinians, Muslims and advocates for Palestinian rights,” a statement on the MLFA website said.
“Some were attacked simply for wearing keffiyehs – traditional Palestinian scarves – and had objects thrown or dumped on them while on campus. “Others were stalked while working as students on campus.”
“Many have had to endure repeated doxxing and threats, even those who did nothing to put themselves out in public,” it continued.
That statement describes the treatment of a student as “shocking, appalling and outrageous.”
“We have been chased, spit on, stalked and hounded by doxx trucks on campus and even in our families' homes.” Not only am I worried about the safety of my family in Palestine, but I also live in fear on the way to class to be attacked. “No student should have to live like this,” the student claimed.
Griffin made headlines in April 2023 when he donated $300 million to Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, bringing his total donations to over half a billion.
Months later, students and alumni criticized Claudine Gay, who was named Harvard's first Black president in 2023, for her handling of demonstrations over the Israel-Hamas conflict and her testimony before Congress about the crisis. Accusations of plagiarism also mounted and Gay resigned earlier this month.
While other alumni, including hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, who has donated about $50 million to Harvard, publicly called for Gay's removal, Griffin had made no public comments about Harvard before Tuesday.
“Unless Harvard makes it very clear that they will resume their role in educating young American men and women to be leaders, to be problem solvers and to tackle difficult problems, I am not interested in supporting the institution,” Griffin said.
He left the door open to resuming his gifts but made it clear that changes need to be made in the way the school pursues its mission.
Griffin spoke more generally about America's elite universities, saying, “The real question is whether they will return to their roots of educating American children and young adults to be the future leaders of our country, or whether they will continue to remain lost.” the wilderness of microaggressions, a DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) agenda that seems to have no real end goal and is simply lost in the wilderness?'
Griffin's Citadel is investing $56 billion. According to LCH Investments, the company reported annual profits of $16 billion in 2022, making it the most successful hedge fund of all time.
Harvard is the richest university in the United States with an endowment of $50.7 billion, but alumni like Ackman have accused it of mismanaging the assets.
Griffin's stance now suggests that other major donors may also slow or stop giving when student tuition hovers around $80,000 a year and critics say the fees are becoming unaffordable.
Just last week, Harvard shed new light on the ongoing investigation into plagiarism allegations against former President Claudine Gay, saying, among other things, that an independent body had recommended a more comprehensive review after substantiating some of the complaints.
In a letter Friday to a congressional committee, Harvard said it learned of the plagiarism allegations against Gay on Oct. 24 from a New York Post reporter.
The school has contacted several authors accused of gay plagiarism and none have objected to their language, it said.
Harvard then appointed the independent panel that focused on two articles published by Gays in 2012 and 2017. It concluded that they were “both sophisticated and original” and found “virtually no evidence of intentional claims of findings” that were not their own.
However, the panel concluded that nine of the 25 claims found by the Post were “of the utmost importance” and involved “paraphrasing or paraphrasing the language of others without quotation marks and without sufficient and clear attribution.”
A case was also found where “fragments of double language and paraphrasing” by Gay could be interpreted as acknowledgment of another academic's work, although there is no evidence that this was her aim.