It’s not just Harvard and Columbia. Small liberal arts colleges are quietly settling antisemitism complaints

This story was originally published in the Forward. Click here to get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox.

As major universities across the U.S. strike deals with the Trump administration over antisemitism complaints, a handful of small liberal arts colleges have been quietly settling cases of their own.

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In the past week, Oregon’s Reed College and Pennsylvania’s Haverford College have both settled complaints accusing them of failing to protect Jewish students in the wake of the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks on Israel and the subsequent Israel-Hamas war. Pomona and Occidental Colleges, both in southern California, settled complaints in late 2024 and 2025, respectively.

At least nine other small liberal arts colleges — which unlike universities mainly focus on undergraduate and interdisciplinary education over research  — are still locked in disputes.

These include Sarah Lawrence and Union in New York; Swarthmore and Lehigh in Pennsylvania; Middlebury in Vermont; Whitman in Washington; Wellesley and Williams in Massachusetts; and Scripps in California.

All colleges either declined the Forward’s requests for comment or did not immediately respond.

“Institutions are failing to effectively respond to anti-Zionist conduct targeting Jews, as they’re legally obligated to do,” said Denise Katz-Prober, special counsel of the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, a non-profit dedicated to advancing the civil rights of the Jewish people. “Most, if not all, of the measures that would apply to a larger institution also apply to a small liberal arts school.”

In most cases, Jewish legal advocacy organizations such as the Brandeis Center, the Anti-Defamation League, or StandWithUs Center for Legal Justice (SCLJ) have leveled the accusations by filing complaints with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

Jews at Haverford, a group of Jewish students, faculty, parents and alumni of the Pennsylvania school, opted for a different tactic, filing a civil lawsuit against the college.

Since 2024, the Trump administration has launched investigations of 60 colleges and universities, including small liberal arts colleges. But it has not taken the same drastic measures with them as it did with larger universities, where it used federal funding as leverage. While some schools agreed to the federal government’s demands and reached multi-million dollar financial settlements, others like Harvard did not, and were subsequently hit with lawsuits. A judge dismissed the lawsuit against Harvard on Thursday.

Most complaints have been filed under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and allege that colleges didn’t take sufficient action when Jewish students complained they were discriminated against. The complaint against Reed College alleged that the school’s inaction after a student claimed she was harassed for being a Zionist created an environment where, soon after, the mezuzah on her doorframe was destroyed and a rock was thrown at her through her dorm window.

At Lehigh, a Jewish student’s mezuzah was stolen, according to the complaint, and, shortly after, a “Stand With Palestine” sticker was placed outside the same door. Lehigh police conducted and closed a brief investigation, the complaint says, but when the student identified who admitted to placing the sticker, the college declined to discipline them or increase security surveillance in the dormitory. Because of this, the complaint says, the Jewish student requested alternative housing for his own safety.

“This is outrageous and blatantly unequal treatment,” reads the complaint, filed by StandWithUs.

The lawsuit against Haverford accuses the school of being too permissive with pro-Palestinian protesters, who occupied the school’s main administrative building in December 2023. According to the suit, protesters would perform chants “quoting from the Hamas Charter,” which calls for the elimination of Israel. The suit also accused the president of saying she would take “no punitive action” against the protesters.

At Wellesley, a student resident assistant sent an email to the underclassmen in her dorm saying, “there should be no space, no consideration, and no support for Zionism within the Wellesley College community,” according to the complaint filed by the Brandeis Center.

The RA sent an apology letter to residents, according to the complaint, but soon after posted on her social media that she stood by her statement, sent the apology because she “had a gun to [her] head,” and called students who objected to her message “some weak bitches fr.” The Title VI complaint against Wellesley alleges that the school didn’t do enough to address this issue.

As part of their settlements, Reed, Pomona and Occidental agreed to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism. The schools also agreed to include education to fight antisemitism in their bias training, and to strengthen the rules for campus demonstrations with regard to time, place and manner.

Haverford also agreed to adopt the IHRA definition, which states that claiming Israel’s existence is a “racist endeavor” or comparing “contemporary Israel policy to that of the Nazis” can be antisemitic.

Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of history and education at the University of Pennsylvania and an advocate for free speech on college campuses, fears that adopting this definition will stifle that freedom.

“I’m Jewish, and anti-Zionist rhetoric is hard for me to hear,” he wrote in an op-ed for the Philadelphia Inquirer. “But that’s why I should hear it. Zionism is probably the most contested question on our campuses right now. Unless everyone can address it freely and openly we’ll never get a good purchase on it.”

Katz-Prober of the Brandeis Center said the IHRA definition does not restrict or censor speech.

“The IHRA definition specifically and explicitly states that criticism leveled against Israel, similar to that leveled against any other country, is not antisemitism, and also requires context,” she said.

“Antisemitism cannot be effectively addressed without first being able to understand and recognize it and the IHRA definition is the most effective and widely accepted tool for doing just that.”

This story was originally published on the Forward.