Sophie Shabot was a student at the Parsons School of Design, a private art college that is part of The New School in New York City, on Oct. 7, 2023. Her classmates knew that she was Jewish and Israeli, and by Oct. 8, she had become a target, her attorney, Ziporah Reich, told JNS.
Reich, director of litigation at the Lawfare Project, filed a lawsuit on Shabot’s behalf in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on Oct. 7, the third anniversary of the terror attacks.
A Brooklyn-based American Jew with Israeli citizenship through her father, Shabot “became a target for relentless antisemitic harassment that took every form you can imagine, including verbal harassment, being chased, being pushed and shoved, being spat on, yelled at, blocked from entering a building,” Reich told JNS.
“Her desk was vandalized,” Reich said. “She was trapped in a Jewish event with pro-Hamas protesters trying to rattle the door and break in, demanding that the Jewish students turn over the ‘terrorist,’ a speaker at the event.”
The lawyer described “an environment overrun with antisemitic, anti-Israel protests, graffiti, posters, leaflets and chants.”
“It was frightening for Shabot and other Jewish students,” she told JNS. “We are trying to hold the New School accountable.”
In one incident, Shabot was trying to get into a sewing studio when protesters blocked the entrance. She “watched as non-Jewish students were given access to the building,” Reich told JNS. “When she begged to be let in and said, ‘I just need to go to the sewing studio,’ they taunted her with, ‘do the children in Gaza have sewing studios?’”
“One student spit on her,” Reich said. “When she tried to run away from being spat at, the students yelled in a megaphone, ‘f*** Israel, f*** you, b****.’”
Shabot was also called “Zio c***, Zio b****, genocidal maniac and baby killer,” the lawyer said. “They followed her in the street and yelled all kinds of profanities at her.”
When Shabot asked the school for help, “not only did they not call the police,” Reich told JNS. “At one point, the school assured the students that were violating the school’s time, place and manner restrictions that they would not be bringing in the police.”
“Students have a hard time reporting stuff to law enforcement,” Reich said. “They expect the school to deal with it. This is happening on school grounds, and they have an expectation that if they report it to the appropriate people at school, the behavior will be dealt with.”
The New School should have done something about the spitting, pushing, shoving, name-calling and students blocking Shabot from entering a building, even without the anti-Israel messaging or targeting based on ethnicity and religion, according to Reich.
“The school is under a tremendous amount of pressure, based on the societal message that Israel is the demon and that Jews are supporting a genocide and it’s a human rights issue,” she told JNS. “They’re willing to sacrifice the rights of Jewish students to allow for that message to be proliferated. Most schools, including the New School, would never take that approach if it was related to another minority.”
Reich said if her client reaches a settlement with the New School, “we wouldn’t be settling for anything less than compensation and significant policy change.” If it goes to trial, “policy change is not on the table, because you can’t get policy change in a trial,” she said.
‘Predictable’ result
There are “similarities” between this lawsuit and the one that Shabbos Kestenbaum brought against Harvard University, which reached a settlement in 2025, according to Reich. And that’s not just because of the similarities between the Jewish student names.
Their campus experiences were similar because groups like Students for Justice in Palestine recruited students across different campuses, the lawyer said.
“They’re giving them the same messages, the same materials, the same tents and other paraphernalia and tools to carry out their harassment,” she told JNS. “They’re engaging in similar types of harassment. The result is predictable.”
The Anti-Defamation League’s campus Jew-hatred report card gave the New School an “F” in March 2026, noting that the U.S. Department of Education’s civil rights office had opened a probe into the school in March 2024 and in March 2025, the department accused the New School of violating Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
In 2025, Brandon White, a Parsons graduate, sued the school for failing to protect him from assault and antisemitic slurs based on the mistaken belief that he was Jewish. White also alleged that he was blocked and shoved and that protesters called him a “Zio” and slammed a door on his hand. He claimed the school refused to investigate and instead opened a disciplinary case against him.
A judge dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that White did not plausibly show he was targeted because he was perceived as Jewish or Israeli. The judge let White amend and refile the complaint, which he did in September.
As an attorney, Reich is approached by “dozens upon dozens of students and employees subjected to severe and pervasive antisemitic harassment, begging for our help,” she told JNS. But not all incidents have a legal remedy.
“Public schools are subjected to the First Amendment,” she said.
That means that protesters can gather in designated areas and shout antisemitic slogans and be legally protected.
“Antisemitism is not illegal,” she told JNS. “Stop filing lawsuits you’re not going to win. Sometimes there is no legal theory upon which you can sue, even though what is happening is antisemitic.”
