Add American University to the growing list of U.S. colleges where Jewish students may want to think twice before applying.

A federal complaint filed on behalf of a half-dozen American University students said they have been subject to “rampant and pervasive antisemitism,” including being threatened, spit at, targeted in class, and called names like “Zionist pig,” while receiving little more than lip service from the administration.

When Jewish students submitted video showing others ripping down Israeli “hostage” posters on campus, the school took action — by launching an investigation into the Jewish students, not those doing the vandalizing, according to the Jan. 17 filing by the Brandeis Center and Jewish on Campus.

“Shamefully, AU has repeatedly chosen to turn a blind eye to the anti-Semitism snowballing on its campus,” said Brandeis Center Chairman Kenneth Marcus, former Education Department assistant secretary for civil rights in the George W. Bush and Trump administrations.

“Not only has the university failed in its legal obligation to protect Jewish students from illegal targeting and harassment, it is attempting to bully those brave enough to speak up,” Mr. Marcus said. “The university’s delinquency is reprehensible, and it only signals to the AU community there are no consequences for those who harass, threaten, assault or shun Jewish and Israeli students, emboldening those hostile to Jews even further.”

Matthew Bennett, American University vice president and chief communications officer, said that supporting Jewish students and combating antisemitism “are top priorities and have been since before the atrocities of October 7.”

“There is no tolerance for antisemitism at AU,” he told The Washington Times in an email. “We take these issues and any concerns from our Jewish community seriously, and we review and address them.”

Mr. Bennett said the school is reviewing the Brandeis letter “for claims that have already been raised and addressed by AU or that are still in progress; claims that are mischaracterized; or claims that were previously unknown to the university and now require our attention.”

Located 4 miles from the White House, American University has a robust Jewish student population. About 20.9% of the school’s 7,669-member undergraduate study body is Jewish, as well as 16.8% of its nearly 6,000 graduate students, according to AU Hillel, the school’s Jewish student center.

Nearly two years ago, he said, American accelerated its work on antisemitism “as we saw the rise of antisemitism happening around the world,” including bringing in Anti-Defamation League experts to brief the university’s leadership team and hosting training sessions for student leaders, resident assistants and faculty.

Since then, he said, American has taken action such as updating its code of conduct, having staff attend events regularly with Jewish students, hosting campus programming on “antisemitism and other forms of hate” and enhancing its first-year AUx2 course to “better address antisemitism.”

The class, part of the core curriculum, examines “race and racism as a socially constructed system, primarily in the context of Western European settler colonialism” as well as “liberation, resistance, or cultural celebration efforts led by historically marginalized people and communities that confront or disrupt systems of oppression.”

The 26-page complaint comes with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights already deluged with complaints about campus antisemitism, a problem supercharged by the Oct. 7 terrorist attack by the Palestinian militant group Hamas on southern Israel, in which more than 1,200 civilians were killed.

The department has opened Title VI “shared ancestry” investigations into 50 universities, colleges and K-12 school districts since Oct. 7. Columbia University is the focus of two probes. The investigations include alleged antisemitism as well as Islamophobia allegations.

Elsewhere, the House Education and the Workforce Committee is investigating antisemitism allegations at Harvard University. The Brandeis Center filed a federal lawsuit in November against the University of California, Berkeley over “longstanding” antisemitism, which school officials have denied.

There’s no question that campus antisemitism has surged since Oct. 7 — Hillel International reported a 700% increase in antisemitic incidents from Oct. 7-Jan. 18 over the same period last year — but the debate centers on whether universities are doing enough to combat it.

Brandeis accused American officials of falling short. The complaint said two FBI agents provided security at a Jewish student’s Dec. 10 piano recital “because AU was unable to ensure his safety” after a poster advertising the event was vandalized with threats.

Someone crossed out his face with yellow marker and wrote, “Death to the Zionists Hitler was right.”

The student, identified in news reports as junior Tomer Ben-Ezer, said he has been spat at repeatedly and called a “Zionist pig” and “Zionist killer,” but the filing said it took the university five days to respond to his first report, and then only after he complained to professors.

On Oct. 20, two Jewish freshmen discovered their dormitory doors vandalized with swastikas. Another swastika and a Nazi slogan were found on the same floor. American Uninversity President Sylvia Burwell issued a same-day statement condemning the vandalism, saying that “[t]his hateful act of antisemitism is reprehensible.”

In November, the Office of Student Accountability and Restorative Practices opened an investigation into five Jewish students after they turned in a video showing other students tearing down “hostage” posters, those with the names and faces of the 240 Israeli civilians kidnapped during the terrorist attack.

The students were charged with harassment and disorderly conduct for recording the incidents. The office said that the other students were “removing unauthorized postings,” even though university policy says that “No community member should remove or deface any poster.”

“This allegation is pure pretext. First, the students removed the Jewish students’ hostage posters from authorized locations as well as from alleged ‘unauthorized’ locations. Second, the students who removed the hostage posters replaced them with their own posters,” said the complaint.

In addition, the students removed only the “hostage” posters, not other flyers tacked up in the “unauthorized” locations, the filing said.

The complaint called the office’s response “harassing, discriminatory and retaliatory,” saying that the students recorded the video lawfully in a public place “to support their claims of anti-Semitic vandalism, because their previous complaints had been summarily dismissed for lack of evidence.”

“The vandalizers themselves, meanwhile, are not being held accountable,” the filing said. “Only the Jewish students are being investigated.”

• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.