UVA settles antisemitism lawsuit in confidential agreement

UVA, whose endowment is valued at over $13 billion, declined to contest the allegations in November, the Progress added, opting instead to resolve the case privately.

By Dion J. Pierre, The Algemeiner

The University of Virginia (UVA) has settled a damaging lawsuit in which a Jewish student accused it of willfully ignoring antisemitic harassment perpetrated by students and professors, a local news outlet reported on Sunday.

According to The Daily Progress, the lawsuit — filed in August by sophomore Matan Goldstein, a Jewish Israeli student — charged that disciplinary officials were missing in action after Goldstein was “pushed, shoved, and slapped” by pro-Hamas activists during dueling demonstrations held several weeks after Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel.

Above all, the suit alleged, antisemitism, including in the form of anti-Zionism, “pervaded, saturated, and thoroughly infected” his college experience, denying him his civil right to a hate-free education.

“The University of Virginia administration, specifically including Defendant President [James Edward Ryan], possessed full knowledge and awareness that antisemitic hate groups were being formed on campus and that they planned a campaign of hate-based and disruptive events to terrorize Jewish students, including Matan, and to destabilize and delegitimize support in the United States for Israel by creating an intolerable and hostile educational environment for Matan and other Jewish students,” lawyers representing the student said, as can be seen in court documents shared by the Progress.

UVA, whose endowment is valued at over $13 billion, declined to contest the allegations in November, the Progress added, opting instead to resolve the case privately.

The terms of the settlement — which is not an admission of guilt or fault — that it negotiated are, however, confidential, and neither Goldstein nor UVA counsel have disclosed whether it involved paying the student money to make his claims go away.

So far, Goldstein’s legal team has only said he “appreciates the steps the university, president, rector, and board of visitors have taken to combat antisemitism on grounds,” the details of which are reportedly buried in a university webpage on “Religious Diversity and Belonging.”

The Algemeiner has asked UVA to describe the details of the settlement, a request to which it did not respond by the time of publication.

As told by the Progress, it is dealing with the fallout of a recent antisemitic incident in which a student brandished and threatened a Jewish student with a gun.

UVA is not the first university to resolve a case and avoid a potentially grueling public trial in which it may have to reveal unsavory information about the institution as well as the individuals it employs.

In July, New York University (NYU) agreed to pay an undisclosed sum of money to settle a lawsuit brought by three students who sued it for responding, allegedly, to antisemitic discrimination “with deliberate indifference.”

The students, some of many alleged victims of campus antisemitism since the 2023-2024 academic school year, charged that NYU students and faculty “repeatedly abuse, malign, vilify, and threaten Jewish students with impunity” and chant antisemitic slogans such as “death to k—kes and “gas the Jews.”

Despite claims of gross violations of school rules, the accused students were seldom, if at all, punished.

NYU did not merely pay money to muzzle its accusers, however.

Over a month after the settlement was reached it updated its Non-Discrimination and Harassment Policy (NDAH), including in it language which identified “Zionist” as a racial dog whistle that sometimes conceals the antisemitic intent of speech and other conduct that denigrates and excludes Jews.

As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the policy acknowledges the “coded” subtleties of antisemitic speech and its use in discriminatory conduct that targets Jewish students and faculty.

Columbia University, another elite school based in the New York City area, has also settled a lawsuit in which it was accused by a student of neglecting its obligation to foster a safe learning environment amid riotous pro-Hamas protests that were held at the school throughout the final weeks of the last academic year.

The resolution of the case, first reported by Reuters, called for Columbia to hire a “Safe Passage Liaison” who will monitor protests and “walking escorts” who will accompany students whose safety is threatened around the campus.

Other details of the settlement included “accommodations” for students whose academic lives are disrupted by protests and new security policies for controlling access to school property.

Other non-civil cases have been solved this academic year.

Earlier this month, Temple University in Philadelphia settled a civil rights complaint with the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), agreeing to address what the agency described as several reports of discrimination and harassment, including “incidents of antisemitic, anti-Muslim, and anti-Palestinian conduct.”

As part of the resolution of the case, Temple University agreed, for example, to enact “remedial” policies for past, inadequately managed investigations of discrimination and apprise OCR of every discrimination complaint it receives until the conclusion of the 2025-2026 academic year.

The university will also conduct a “climate” survey to measure students’ opinions on the severity of discrimination on campus, the results of which will be used to “create an action plan” which OCR did not define but insisted on its being “subject to OCR approval.”

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