‘We want a refund!’ Jewish Harvard students are demanding tuition reimbursements as trolls blame THEM for Claudine Gay debacle and label them ‘Zionist pedos’ in shameful social media posts

Jewish Harvard students are demanding tuition reimbursement at the expensive school over its “abject failure” to protect them from rampant anti-Semitism.

Last week, six students led by Shabbat Kestenbaum filed a lawsuit against the university, demanding that anti-Semitic professors be fired, and that students who troll them be punished.

In an interview with DailyMail.com, Kestenbaum – whose legal name is Alex – said he and the other students are also seeking compensation. For some students attending the prestigious law school, that amounts to more than $75,000 per year.

Attorney Mark Ressler of Kasowitz Benson Torres LLP represents the group. The company has also filed lawsuits against NYU and UPenn over similar claims of breach of contract and failure to comply with discrimination laws.

He says Harvard “has not lived up to its end of the bargain” in protecting Jewish students from discrimination, and that the families have the right to ask for their money back.

“Whatever the annual tuition costs at Harvard Law School must be reimbursed. Harvard breached its contract with students.

“Harvard has not kept its promise: Jews are excluded from the code of conduct that is supposed to protect them.”

Since school President Claudine Gay resigned on January 2, students have been targeted by Harvard’s internal social media site, SideChat.

There, other students anonymously labeled them “Zionist pedophiles” and expressed their full support for Hamas.

Kestenbaum reached out to the school’s DEI department and interim president Alan Gabrer, but received nothing in the way of reassurance, he says.

Now, some Jewish students are afraid to return to campus for the spring semester.

‘There is a lot of tension, nerves, fear… I just got home for break and my parents don’t want me to go back to campus.

“They are afraid for my physical safety… I wouldn’t be surprised if there are physical attacks on Jewish students when we go back.

“We have no reason to believe that the spring semester will be any better, and in fact much reason to believe that there will be more and more intense acts of anti-Semitism given the acceleration of anti-Semitic posts on social media,” he said.

The posts are all written by students who are ‘encouraged’ by the cloak of anonymity. If Harvard wanted to investigate the comments, they could trace the IP addresses associated with user accounts, but Kestenbaum says administrators show no interest in taking such steps.

“What’s critical for people to understand is that these are the students I’m in class with. Students I have contact with every day.

“To know that they don’t just support Hamas and see it as legitimate resistance, they think there is a conspiracy where Jews control the media.

‘That Jews and Zionists are baby murderers and pedophiles. If this were any other minority group – we know because Harvard rightly has a track record of standing up to bigotry and hatred, but there is such an obvious, insulting and hurtful double standard when it comes to Jewish students,” he said. .

He and students from Students Against Antisemitism filed their lawsuit as a “last resort,” he added.

“It’s not something where I woke up and said, let’s sue Harvard. We tried going through every other channel but were rejected time and time again.

“We didn’t know what else to do.”

The lawsuit will also investigate donations from foreign countries and groups that Ressler says are questionable.

“We will ensure that Harvard does not accept donations from any other country that are conditioned on a professor spewing anti-Semitic poison in class or on campus.

‘That is something we will investigate when we receive internal emails. The concern is that foreign countries are donating large sums of money under certain conditions. Above all, you must ensure that Middle Eastern Studies classes, for example, are completely anti-Israel.

‘One of Harvard’s largest donors is Qatar. We will investigate whether those donations were conditional.’

Ultimately, the company hopes to oust key executives, such as ousted president Claudine Gay.

Kestenbaum said he and the other Jewish students felt “betrayed” by Gay’s response to the Oct. 7 massacre and the general support for it on campus.

When Gay was sworn in as president, he was among the students who embraced the fact that she was the school’s first black female president.

“I took a selfie with her at her inauguration. I thought, look how far we’ve come.

‘How disappointed I was when a month later she betrayed some of her most fervent supporters.

“We had no reason to doubt her leadership qualities, but literally almost overnight from October 7 to 8, there was a total abdication of moral responsibility, whether by not condemning the massacre or by not condemning the protests on campus.

“They never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”

In her resignation letter, Gay refused to take responsibility for the scandal. The next day, she wrote an op-ed in The New York Times blaming “demagogues” who sought to undermine Harvard’s “legacy.”

According to Kestenbaum, anti-Semitic messages on SideChat skyrocketed.

“She opened the floodgates by refusing to take personal responsibility, and instead blamed these outside ‘demagogues’ that she was giving a nice nod to many different actors, and we, the Jewish students, were on the receiving end of it .

“At one point, Harvard was 25% Jewish. Now it is about 5%. It is not because Jews have become dumber over time,” he said.

Kestenbaum and the others are waiting for reassuring words and a plan to protect the Jewish student population from Alan Garber, Gay’s interim replacement.

So far, they have received one email sent to all students discussing the “difficult time” the school was going through.

“We need leadership, protection and guidance, but we are not given any of that.

‘Were concerned. My mom literally doesn’t want me to go back to campus,” he said.

Harvard has not yet responded to the lawsuit.