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A pro-Palestinian graduate student group has sued Northwestern University, claiming the school’s mandatory antisemitism training is discriminatory and violates the free speech rights of Arabs, new court papers show.
The university began cracking down on campus anti-Israel demonstrations and requiring the training modules, “ironically-named ‘Building a Community of Respect and Breaking Down Bias,'” in February, months after heated protests, according to the lawsuit.
But the training uses such a broad definition of antisemitism that it limits political discourse and free speech, labeling them instead anti-Jewish, the Northwestern Graduate Workers for Palestine alleges in the complaint.
“Northwestern equates criticism of political practices and ideologies with discrimination against Jews themselves,” the suit, filed Wednesday in Illinois federal court, charges.
The suit filed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) on behalf of the student group seeks for the training to be ruled unlawful and nixed altogether. The plaintiffs also want to do away with the disciplinary policy against students who don’t complete it.
The suit seeks unspecified damages.
The court docs allege that Evanston-based university policy is actually discriminatory against Palestinian and Arab students by barring them from talking about their national aspirations and protesting against the mistreatment of their people.
And the school won’t allow them to take a stand against the video — “dehumanizing Arabs in the process,” the suit charges.
The video, made by the Jewish United Fund, at one point presents quotes from Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke mixed in with statements by anti-Israel protesters to demonstrate “you can’t tell the difference” between the comments, according to a report by Washington Free Beacon.
The school has branded Arab and Palestinian students’ “ethnic and religious identities, cultures, and advocacy for the rights of their national group as antisemitic and subject to discipline,” the filing alleges.
For example, the school has been coercing students into complete the training by threatening to kick them out if they haven’t watched the videos and signed off on the policies by Monday or by Feb. 2, 2026, depending on when they registered.
“Several members of Grad Workers for Palestine will lose their student status and employment if they do not complete the training,” the filing says.
At least 300 students had been blocked from registering from classes because they refused to watch the video, the Guardian reported last month.
One Ph.D candidate, Laura Jaliff, told the Evanston Round Table earlier this month that she didn’t want to take the anti-bias training because she believed it was discriminatory.
“The number of students who are refusing to take the training on the grounds that it contains damaging political propaganda that has no place in our workplace will inevitably grow,” Jaliff warbed.
Students and faculty have widely opposed the training course on the grounds the video “is discriminatory and not scholarly,” but the school hasn’t budged, the suit says.
The university’s policy was enacted following anti-Israel protests in April and May 2024 in which students set up encampments on campus. Counter demonstrators stole and destroyed property, spat on students, screamed in their faces and called the Jewish participants ‘fake Jews,'” the suit claims.
One person allegedly said, “you are lucky you are here; if you were in Israel I’d just shoot you like an animal,” the suit claims.
Instead of looking into the threats, campus police cracked down on the encampments “with excessive and unreasonable force” and also by filing criminal complaints against the pro-Palestinian demonstrators. The Cook County State Attorney’s office declined to prosecute the four people who were arrested, the suit says.
Anti-Israel protesters allegedly vandalized a campus building which housed the Holocaust center by scrawling “Death to Israel” and “Intifada Now” on it, the Free Beacon reported.
And the encampment protesters allegedly screamed insults like “dirty Jew” and “Zionist pig” in the direction of students walking by, the Forward reported.
The university’s former president Michael Schill was criticized for his alleged negligence in handling antisemitism at the school — and was grilled by the US House committee over the unrest. He resigned last month.
The Trump administration froze $790 million in federal grants and contracts to the university in April, the Evanston Round Table reported.
Coalition Against Antisemitism at Northwestern president Michael Teplitsky blasted the suit as “absurd,” in a statement to the Free Beacon.
“The idea that an antisemitism training could somehow threaten anyone’s civil rights is absurd,” Teplitsky said. “Northwestern worked with JUF [Jewish United Fund] to create a student program aimed at inclusion and understanding — exactly what universities are supposed to do.”
Republican lawmakers New York Rep. Elise Stefanik and Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton last week called on the Trump administration to probe CAIR’s sources of funding, including “potential ties” to Hamas.
Northwestern declined to comment on pending litigation.
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