Columbia Law Professor: Class Action Lawsuit Now Tougher for Jewish Students

A former Columbia Law School professor says it will be more difficult for Jewish students to file a class action lawsuit against the university after it announced all classes will transition to virtual or hybrid learning amid ongoing safety concerns stemming from anti-Israel protests.

Danny Karon, a former Columbia Law School professor who specializes in class action suits, believes Jewish students may have had a stronger case earlier this week when Rabbi Elie Buechler advised them to leave campus and go home due to safety concerns posed by anti-Israel agitators. However, the university's decision to move all courses on its main campus to hybrid learning "until the end of each school's Spring 2024 semester" has made it more challenging.

"I don't think it was pretextual, I think Columbia did the right thing to preserve the safety of its kids. But with that unwittingly came a real good class defense," Karon told Fox News Digital.

Karon explained that if the university had not implemented the school-wide hybrid learning approach, it would have been easier for Jewish students, or any students who felt harassed, to have a class action case. "Because then you would know that everybody who was at home studying was there because they felt harassed, and there'd be no question as to whether they felt aggrieved," he said.

However, now that everyone has been sent home from Columbia, it is essentially impossible to know who felt harassed and wanted to flee, as opposed to students who were not impacted or are "perfectly fine" with remote learning.

"Now that the school has made it a school-wide approach that might unwittingly, unknowing to the school, have been enough to scuttle the possibility of a class action. Or maybe a resourceful plaintiffs’ lawyer, if retained by the right, perhaps harassed Jewish Arab students, could claim a class of just harassed students. How they would demonstrate who those were could be a challenge," Karon said.

He acknowledged that it might be possible to define a class of harassed students, but emphasized that it would be a difficult task. "These class actions are necessarily difficult, and it's necessarily tough to show that cohesiveness among a group of folks who then necessarily has people who feel different ways," he said.

Karon expressed his sadness about the recent events at Columbia, where he taught in 2018-2019. "I never saw antisemitism anywhere. I saw inclusiveness and cooperativeness. And, it was just a great vibe. I never saw any of this. It's really sad that now it's sweeping the campus," he said.

The new guidance followed days of protests at Columbia, where anti-Israel agitators initially formed an encampment on the campus. The protesters have demanded that the school lose affiliations with groups that support Israel amid its war with Hamas in Gaza.

Columbia University President Dr. Nemat "Minouche" Shafik previously said in a statement that she was "deeply saddened" by certain actions of the agitators and called for a "reset."

Fox News Digital’s Lawrence Richard, Jeffrey Clark, and Danielle Wallace contributed to this report.