An Orthodox Jewish Student.
A Rutgers Dorm.
“Hitler Would Have Loved You.”
Three threads, one campus. Rivka Schafer is an Orthodox Jewish, LGBTQ+ Rutgers student who in May 2024 sued the university in federal court alleging Demarest Hall had become what their complaint calls a “laboratory of antisemitism”. The U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights closed an investigation against Rutgers on January 2, 2025— in the final hours of the Biden administration — after receiving roughly 400 reports of hateful incidents on campus between July 2023 and June 2024, three-quarters of them targeting Jewish or Israeli students. The settlement required Rutgers to issue a statement and conduct a review. On May 6, 2026, Rutgers cancelled its School of Engineering convocation speaker, biotech CEO and Rutgers alumnus Rami Elghandour, after students objected to his social-media posts accusing Israel of war crimes. Three different power dynamics. One institution. The receipts are below.
- 400+OCR reportsHateful incidents at Rutgers, July 2023–June 2024 — ~75% targeting Jews/Israelis
- Jan 2, 2025OCR settlementLast-day Biden-administration resolution — required statement + review only
- May 9, 2024Schafer lawsuit filedDemarest Hall — Title VI / NJ Law Against Discrimination claims
- May 6, 2026speaker cancelledRami Elghandour pulled days before May 15 engineering convocation
May 9, 2024. Rivka Schafer— an Orthodox Jewish Rutgers undergraduate from Bergen County who identifies as LGBTQ+ and uses they/them pronouns — filed suit against Rutgers University in federal court. The complaint alleges the university failed to protect Jewish students after October 7, 2023 and tolerated “bullying, intimidation, harassment, discrimination, and retaliation” in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (NJLAD). The phrase the complaint uses for Schafer's residence hall: “a laboratory of antisemitism.”
Schafer lived in Demarest Hall— informally known on campus as the “gay dorm” — in the 2023-2024 academic year, one of only a few Jewish residents in the building. The complaint chronicles a series of incidents:
October 15, 2023:a residence-hall meeting at which at least one student expressed approval that there was a large death toll in Israel on October 7. Other residents indicated agreement by “snapping,” the typical Demarest Hall convention for showing assent. Schafer left the meeting “shaking.”
Undated 2023-2024: a mezuzah— a Jewish religious scroll affixed to a doorpost — was removed from a Jewish resident's door and discarded in a women's bathroom on the floor.
March 28, 2024:fliers featuring Schafer's photograph were plastered outside their dorm room and throughout Demarest Hall, captioned “Free Palestine,” “Free Gaza,” and urging students to vote “Yes” on a Rutgers boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) student referendum.
May 2, 2024: at a campus pro-Palestine encampment, an unidentified participant told Schafer that “Hitler would have loved you,” while comparing Hamas to Warsaw Ghetto resisters. The university took no disciplinary action against any student or organization for the incident, per the complaint and Fox News reporting.
“The university's tolerance of bullying, intimidation, harassment, discrimination, and retaliation against Jewish students denies them their right to an adequate educational environment.”
Schafer v. Rutgers · Federal complaint, U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey · May 9, 2024
On January 2, 2025, the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced a resolution agreement closing its Title VI investigation of Rutgers. The timing was unmistakable: the settlement landed 18 days before the Biden administration left office. OCR investigators had received approximately 400 reports of hateful incidents at Rutgers between July 2023 and June 2024, with roughly three-quarters alleging discrimination against Jewish or Israeli students.
What Rutgers agreed to do in exchange for the case being closed:
1. Issue a statement to students and employees prohibiting discrimination on the basis of national origin (including shared ancestry).
2. Review past discrimination reports for compliance with Title VI.
3. Take further action as needed based on that review.
No fines. No required leadership changes. No specific disciplinary requirements tied to the 400+ documented complaints. No federal monitor. The closure language used by OCR — that Rutgers “likely failed to protect Jewish and pro-Palestinian students from Title VI harassment” — was the strongest factual finding in the agreement, and it carried no enforcement teeth.
“I personally think the university is being let off the hook. It's a promise that we had before.”
Camilla Vaynberg, Vice President · Rutgers Students Supporting Israel · January 2025
“A lot of what Rutgers agreed to involves 'statements' and 'reviews' but they have been stating and reviewing things right and left since October 7th — and yet, the rate of antisemitic incidences at Rutgers continues to rise.”
Ben Stern, Rutgers sophomore (Political Science) · January 2025
“The DOE sat on over 400 reports of discrimination for a year, and on the way out the door signed another toothless agreement.”
Mark Goldfeder, Director · National Jewish Advocacy Center · January 2025
Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI), Chairman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, characterized the agreement as the Biden administration “letting universities, including Rutgers… off the hook.”Andrew Getraer, the former Rutgers Hillel director, described the timing as politically motivated — allowing the outgoing administration to claim the case “closed” before the incoming Trump administration could escalate it.
May 6, 2026. Rutgers cancelled Rami Elghandour, CEO of biotech firm Arcellx and a Rutgers electrical-and-computer-engineering alumnus, as the keynote speaker for the School of Engineering Convocationon May 15. Rutgers had announced Elghandour's selection on the School of Engineering's own website prior to the cancellation.
Elghandour, in his personal social-media presence, has accused Israel of war crimes and apartheid, frequently shares news articles and footage of violence in Gaza and the West Bank, and served as executive producerof a documentary about a Palestinian girl killed by the Israel Defense Forces. The university's spokesperson said the cancellation was made because “some graduating students would not attend their graduation ceremony due to concerns about the invited speaker's social media posts.”
“This decision keeps the focus on our engineering students and honors the celebratory spirit of the event.”
Rutgers University spokesperson · May 6, 2026
Elghandour responded by saying he found the cancellation puzzling, and announced he would record his planned speech and post it online. The university declined to specify which posts triggered the decision.
What makes Rutgers' situation distinct in the post-October-7 campus universe is the combination. Many universities had a federal antisemitism complaint. Many universities had a Title VI lawsuit. Many universities had a speaker controversy. Rutgers has all three on the table simultaneously, in front of two different administrations, with two different sets of expectations about enforcement.
The Schafer lawsuitis a private federal civil-rights claim that survives any change in federal administration. The plaintiff is an Orthodox, LGBTQ+ Jewish student suing for the right to live in a campus dormitory without antisemitic posters on her door — a fact pattern that resists the easy partisan framing of campus-Israel debates. The OCR settlement is the kind of last-day bureaucratic resolution that critics from across the spectrum have flagged as substantively empty. The Elghandour cancellationraises the institutional countervailing problem: a university that pulls a speaker's invitation over off-campus speech generates its own free-speech and viewpoint-discrimination questions — and not everyone uncomfortable with the pulled invitation is comfortable with how Rutgers has handled the underlying complaints either.
The incoming Trump administrationhas signaled stronger enforcement against universities cited for tolerating antisemitic harassment. That posture, combined with an active federal lawsuit, an unresolved OCR record, and a high-profile speaker cancellation, leaves the Rutgers president's office (currently in transition after Jonathan Holloway announced his resignation) facing a much narrower window for what counts as an acceptable institutional response.
An Orthodox Jewish, LGBTQ+ student living in a Rutgers dorm sued the university over a year of documented antisemitic harassment that the school's own internal mechanisms failed to stop. Four hundred OCR complaints later, the Biden administration closed the file with a settlement requiring Rutgers to write a statement and review its records — eighteen days before leaving office. Eighteen months after that, the same university cancelled its engineering convocation speaker for posting criticism of Israel on his personal social media. The students who said the OCR agreement was “toothless” in January 2025 are now watching a university that pulls a speaker faster than it disciplines a poster. Different speech. Same institution. The IRS doesn't poll. Neither does Title VI.