Orthodox Jewish student sues Columbia over 'virulently hostile' environment in the wake of Oct. 7 attack
A Jewish student at Columbia University is suing the school over what she claims was an "explosion" of antisemitism since the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel, according to reports.
Mackenzie Forrest, a 23-year-old graduate student, filed the lawsuit against the Ivy League institution claiming she faced discrimination because she’s an Orthodox Jew and Sabbath observer, Bloomberg News reported. Forrest said protests calling for the genocide of Jews and antisemitic manifestos in the School of Social Work where she studied created a "virulently hostile" environment after the Hamas attack against the Jewish state.
Forrest said her rights under Title VI of the US Civil Rights Act of 1964 were compromised, alleging the school "violated federal and state anti-discrimination laws that prohibit discrimination and retaliation against Jewish persons" and failed to enforce its own rules of conduct to prevent "anti-Jewish harassment, threats, intimidation and hostile environments," the Columbia Spectator reported.
"Columbia University failed Mackenzie and decided to launch a retaliatory campaign instead of protecting her from Jew-hatred," said Brooke Goldstein, Founder and Executive Director of the Lawfare Project. "If the university had provided her with the appropriate accommodations that she is legally entitled to, we would not be in this situation. Columbia, like any other college and university, must protect the civil rights of their students and provide them with safe learning environments free of discrimination."
The move came on the same day Columbia was added to a U.S. House Committee investigation on campus antisemitism. On Monday, the committee sent a letter to Columbia and its trustees requesting documents and information regarding various incidents that they believe show the school failed to protect its Jewish students in the week and months after the October attack, which left at least 1,200 Israelis dead and led to the capture of over 250 hostages.
The events in Israel and Gaza "unleashed an explosion of antisemitism on the Columbia campus, rendering it, at least temporarily, unsafe for Jewish students," the complaint said, according to Bloomberg's report. "Columbia became a ‘war zone’ for [Mackenzie] simply because she is a Jew."
As a result of the campus environment, Forrest asked to continue her graduate program remotely, but the school "did not consider her concerns for her personal safety to be worthy of accommodation" and instead told her she risked failing the field placement portion of the program.
In addition, Forrest's academic advisor allegedly told her she was "the only person feeling unsafe" and that it was an "unreasonable request," the Columbia Spectator reported. As a result, she was not permitted to attend class via Zoom "even though [CSSW] had previously allowed other students to attend certain classes online" and "allowed all students to attend classes online on December 6, 2023, the day of a scheduled ‘teach-in’ in support of Hamas," the complaint said.
In addition, before she accepted her position in the program, Forrest told Professor André Ivanoff, the director of her graduate program, that she is Sabbath-observant, but planned to do what was "required to succeed in the DBT Program."
"That is a problem," Ivanoff responded, according to the lawsuit. "Well, not a problem, but an issue," Ivanoff allegedly said after.
Ultimately, Forrest withdrew from the program on Dec. 14, but "until the very end, CSSW administrators tried to characterize Macky’s withdrawal from the DBT Program as her choice – even though in reality, it was anything but," the lawsuit states.
Lawsuits similar to Forrest's have also been brought by students at Harvard University, New York University, the University of Pennsylvania and University of California, Berkeley.
Columbia University declined to provide comment to Fox News Digital.