The Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations filed a lawsuit against Northwestern University in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois on Oct. 15, alleging that the private school's mandatory antisemitism bias training program violates federal civil rights law.

Some 300 students at the Evanston, Ill., school, who declined to watch the bias training video, were reportedly unable to register for classes.

CAIR and others filed the suit on behalf of Graduate Workers for Palestine, a student group at the school.

The suit alleges that the 17-minute video, which Jewish United Fund created, "repeatedly conflates Zionism and Judaism in order to render Zionism impervious to critique" and is "discriminatory," preventing students from "advocating for Palestinian liberation, equal rights, an end to apartheid in Palestine, and for the rights of Palestine's indigenous people."

It adds that mandating that students watch the video violates Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

JNS sought comment from Northwestern.

The video states that "Zionism is the belief in the Jewish right to self-determination in some part of their homeland" and that anti-Zionism is "opposition to the Jewish right of self-determination."

The video also asks viewers to say whether they think a series of statements were made by anti-Israel activists or former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.

"The fact that you can't tell the difference is terrifying," the video states.

Paul Eckles, senior litigation counsel at the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, told JNS that the lawsuit tries to "turn antidiscrimination law on its head."

"They're trying to argue that having students take antisemitism training is somehow a bad thing and discriminatory, and that's not the case. It's not the law," he said.

"More education in this area can only be a good thing."

Eckles, who hasn't viewed the video, told JNS that "anti-Zionism" has become the "preferred term for some groups who want to engage in antisemitic behavior."

"Education about anti-Zionism and how it's being weaponized as something directed against Jews in general is a good thing," he said.

In the suit, CAIR and its partners state that "under the pretense of combating antisemitism," Northwestern "enacted policies and practices that prohibit expressions of Palestinian identity, culture and advocacy for self-determination and silence those, including Jewish students, who express solidarity with Palestinians or even engage in critical academic engagement with Zionism."

The suit notes that some three dozen Northwestern students still haven't watched the video or agreed to be subject to its terms and that the school has put a hold on their registration.

The school said it "will terminate the student affiliation of students who do not complete them by Oct. 20, 2025, or by Feb. 2, 2026, depending on whether they preregistered for the fall quarter prior to being placed on a registration hold," it states.

"Northwestern has not issued any comparable threats nor registration holds to students, who refrained from completing its mandatory sexual misconduct training," according to the suit.

The suit also criticized Northwestern's adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's working definition of Jew-hatred.

The suggestion that the widely-used definition is "somehow improper" is "just nonsense," Eckles told JNS.

"It's the official definition used by the United States of America."

"It was during the Biden administration. It is during the Trump administration," he said.

"It's been adopted by tons of private universities, public universities, states, municipalities, foreign governments. It's the predominant and preferred definition used these days that explains what antisemitism is and gives examples of what type of conduct is antisemitic."

Eckles also said it is "nonsense" that the lawsuit calls Northwestern's "time, place and manner" rules, which are "standard policies" governing protests at nearly every school, "censorship policies."

"Schools need basic, uniform policies to be applied to all forms of protest activity on all sides, regardless of viewpoint," he said. "That's what Northwestern has done here."

"Universities need to be doing more things like training and having more clear policies," he said. "Lawsuits like this are being filed to try and intimidate universities into not doing those things."

Gerard Filitti, senior counsel at the Lawfare Project, told JNS that the suit "isn't about civil rights. It's about waging lawfare to normalize Jew-hatred."

"The university's antisemitism training was meant to protect Jewish students and faculty, like every other minority group, from harassment and bias," he said.

"Instead of standing against hate, CAIR is twisting the Civil Rights Act into a shield for antisemitic conduct."

"No one's 'identity' entitles them to glorify terrorism, vilify Jews or deny Israel's right to exist," he said.

"If Northwestern caves to this attempt to delegitimize the very idea that Jew-hatred exists on campus, it will embolden extremists nationwide by demonstrating that attacking Jews still carries no consequence in American higher education."

Miriam Elman, executive director of the Academic Engagement Network, said that "embedding antisemitism awareness into antibias training for all incoming students is one of AEN's best practices and a top priority for our faculty members."

"The fact that some organizations oppose education aimed at confronting and preventing Jew-hatred is truly disheartening," she said. "Equally unfounded, and frankly absurd, is the claim that mandatory antisemitism awareness training violates civil rights."

"More schools should require these student-facing programs, as Northwestern commendably does, not move in the opposite direction," Elman said.

This JNS.org report was republished with permission from Jewish News Syndicate.