Pro-Palestine students filed a Title VI lawsuit against Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, over claims that measures to combat antisemitism, including mandatory training, are “coercive and discriminatory.”
The federal class-action lawsuit was filed on October 15 on behalf of Northwestern Graduate Workers for Palestine (GW4P) and two affected students, named as Ifeayin Eziamaka Ogbuli (a second year doctoral student) and Marwa Tahboub (a fifth-year doctoral candidate).
The lawsuit alleges that the university has violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as well as the Civil Rights Act of 1866 “under the pretense of combating antisemitism.”
The suit lists several examples of measures taken against pro-Palestinian activism by the university which it considers to be oppressive.
The first is the use of campus police to “attack” student participants of a pro-Palestine encampment set up in April 2024. Northwestern University Police Department (NUPD) was instructed to crackdown on the protesters. Northwestern faculty and staff members intervened to protect the student encampment by linking arms around it. According to the suit, “the NUPD responded to the faculty and staff with excessive and unreasonable force and by filing criminal complaints against four of them.”
Pro-Palestine students sue Northwestern over 'student speech repression'
The second example is the university’s alleged “yielding” to “unconstitutional governmental pressure to repress student speech.” This refers to a May 2023 decision by the House of Representatives to investigate Northwestern’s antisemitism, which in turn led Northwestern President Michael Schill to testify that the encampment was “antisemitic” and “pro-terror.”
Following the investigation, and the testimony of Schill, the university enacted policies to combat antisemitism, which the suit refers to as “policies to restrict students from expressions of national origin.”
“Northwestern capitulated to pressure from the Committee by ramping up its repression of legitimate, non-discriminatory speech by students, faculty, and staff in solidarity with Palestinians,” the suit argues.
Such measures included restricting protests, banning overnight demonstrations, and enforcing the need for permits to use devices that amplify sound.
Allegedly, the university also introduced censorship policies, and “surveilled campus speech of those in solidarity with Palestinian victims of genocide.”
The lawsuit also pays particular attention to – and strongly condemns – Northwestern’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which it says “limits Arab students, particularly Palestinian students.”
The IRHA definition appears in the new mandatory antisemitism training, which the lawsuit complains equates Zionism and Judaism.
The suit adds that the “conceptualization of the Jewish right to self-determination is discriminatory.” The discussion of the antisemitism module of the mandatory training takes up five pages of the lawsuit, over five times more than any other of the stated examples of Title VI violations.
Ogbuli and Tahboub and other members of GW4P boycotted the mandatory training.
On September 22, 2025, Northwestern informed them that “If you remain unregistered by October 20 in the fall or February 2 in the winter, your academic program will be discontinued, terminating your student affiliation with Northwestern until you complete the attestations and your application to return is approved.”
The lawsuit is being brought on five counts. Count one: discrimination on the basis of race (regarding the plaintiffs); count two: discrimination on the base of race, color, and national origin; counts three and four: retaliation for opposing discrimination, and count five: violation of the Illinois Worker Freedom of Speech Act.
The plaintiffs are seeking relief against the defendant, including declaratory relief, injunctive relief (preventing the university from using the IHRA definition), and emotional distress damages.
The hearing is to take place on Monday afternoon. Following the end of the hearing, the Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Chicago) will host a news conference with Kapitan Gomaa Law, P.C., Hawks Quindel S.C., Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), Alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez, Northwestern faculty, and other advocates.