Kasowitz: Penn’s Meritless Motion to Dismiss the Lawsuit Challenging Penn’s Pervasive Antisemitism Only Proves the Need for the Lawsuit in the First Place

On February 12, 2024, the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) filed a motion to dismiss the civil rights lawsuit against Penn filed by Kasowitz Benson Torres on behalf of Jewish Penn students who have faced pervasive antisemitic hatred, discrimination, harassment, and intimidation while attending Penn.

In the complaint, filed on December 5, 2023 in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the students allege that Penn has transformed itself into an incubation lab for virulent anti-Jewish hatred, harassment, and discrimination; has enforced Penn’s own rules of conduct selectively to avoid protecting Jewish students from hatred and harassment; has provided platforms for rabidly antisemitic professors who call for anti-Jewish violence and spread terrorist propaganda; and has ignored Jewish students’ pleas for protection. 

Marc E. Kasowitz, partner at Kasowitz Benson Torres, stated:  “Just weeks ago, Penn’s president refused to confirm to Congress that calling for the genocide of Jews violates Penn’s code of conduct. Now, in its meritless motion to dismiss, Penn, while trying to downplay the virulent antisemitism it has tolerated and enabled for so long on its campus, also says that it should be trusted to fix the problem. But since that infamous testimony, the antisemitic hatred, discrimination, and harassment permeating Penn’s campus has if anything worsened.  Rather than trying to avoid responsibility, Penn should be instituting the kind of effective measures outlined in the lawsuit necessary to protect its Jewish students who fear for their safety.    Instead, Penn is engaging in the equivocation and denial and, yes, indifference that its former president so callously and disastrously displayed during the recent Congressional hearings.  Penn’s motion only underscores the need for the lawsuit—unless compelled to, Penn will not change.”

Combat Campus Antisemitism Foundation Ltd. (CCAF) is helping to fund the prosecution of this lawsuit, as well as similar lawsuits on behalf of Jewish students against other major universities, including Harvard and New York University.  CCAF was formed to combat — through litigation under federal, state and local civil rights laws and other measures — increasingly rampant antisemitism on our country's leading university campuses and at other institutions.   www.combatcampusantisemitism.org

The Kasowitz Benson Torres team representing the University of Pennsylvania students is led by partners Marc E. Kasowitz, Daniel R. Benson, Mark P. Ressler and Andrew L. Schwartz, and includes associates Joshua E. Roberts, Jillian R. Roffer, Andrew C. Bernstein and William Wolfe Taub.