CAIR Represents Students Suing Northwestern Over Antisemitism Training

A law­suit chal­lenges North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty’s manda­to­ry anti­semitism train­ing pro­gram on grounds that it equates crit­i­cism of Israel or Zion­ism with anti­semitism and threat­ens stu­dents with reg­is­tra­tion ter­mi­na­tion for refus­ing to com­plete it. On 15 Octo­ber 2025, Kap­i­tan Gomaa Law, CAIR-Chica­go, and Hawks Quin­del announced they filed a fed­er­al class action law­suit in the U.S. Dis­trict Court for the North­ern Dis­trict of Illi­nois on behalf of Grad­u­ate Work­ers for Pales­tine and affect­ed stu­dents alleg­ing vio­la­tions of Title VI of the Civ­il Rights Act. The arti­cle begins:

The law­suit alleges that North­west­ern imposed eth­nic and polit­i­cal con­for­mi­ty on stu­dents by forc­ing them to com­plete a manda­to­ry “anti­semitism” train­ing and sign attes­ta­tions that equate crit­i­cism of Israel or Zion­ism with anti­semitism. The required train­ing video—created with the Jew­ish Unit­ed Fund (JUF)—reportedly likens anti-Zion­ist speech to state­ments by the Ku Klux Klan. Stu­dents who refused on moral or polit­i­cal grounds were threat­ened with reg­is­tra­tion holds and ter­mi­na­tion of their stu­dent sta­tus. Despite the Fac­ul­ty Assem­bly’s over­whelm­ing vote oppos­ing the require­ment, North­west­ern moved for­ward, warn­ing that non­com­pli­ant stu­dents could lose enroll­ment as soon as Octo­ber 20, 2025. The com­plaint accus­es North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty of vio­lat­ing Title VI of the Civ­il Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000d et seq. (“Title VI”), the Civ­il Rights Act of 1866 (“Sec­tion 1981”), and the Illi­nois Work­er Free­dom of Speech Act, 820 ILCS 57.

Read more: https://kapitangomaa.com/breaking-news-students-sue-northwestern-over-coercive-antisemitism-training/

Key Points

• The law­suit alleges that North­west­ern’s manda­to­ry anti­semitism train­ing video cre­at­ed with the Jew­ish Unit­ed Fund likens anti-Zion­ist speech to state­ments by the Ku Klux Klan.
• Accord­ing to the com­plaint, stu­dents who refused the train­ing on moral or polit­i­cal grounds were threat­ened with reg­is­tra­tion holds and ter­mi­na­tion of their stu­dent status.
• The law­suit states that despite the Fac­ul­ty Assem­bly’s over­whelm­ing vote against the train­ing require­ment, North­west­ern pro­ceed­ed with enforce­ment threat­en­ing an Octo­ber 20, 2025 com­pli­ance deadline.
• The com­plaint alleges that North­west­ern vio­lat­ed Title VI of the Civ­il Rights Act, Sec­tion 1981 of the Civ­il Rights Act of 1866, and the Illi­nois Work­er Free­dom of Speech Ac

Accord­ing to GIOR research, Yus­ra Gomaa of Kap­i­tan Gomaa Law, a named attor­ney on the law­suit, was for­mer­ly asso­ci­at­ed with CAIR-Chicago.

CAIR: Muslim Brotherhood Origins and Domestic Political Influence Operations

The Coun­cil on Amer­i­can-Islam­ic Rela­tions (CAIR) was found­ed in 1994 by three offi­cers of the Islam­ic Asso­ci­a­tion for Pales­tine, which formed part of the US Hamas infra­struc­ture, with doc­u­ments from the Holy Land Foun­da­tion ter­ror­ism tri­al con­firm­ing that CAIR founders and cur­rent lead­ers were part of the Pales­tine Com­mit­tee of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. CAIR describes itself as Amer­i­ca’s largest Islam­ic civ­il lib­er­ties group, though a US fed­er­al judge ruled in 2009 that the gov­ern­ment had pro­duced ample evi­dence estab­lish­ing CAIR’s asso­ci­a­tions with the Holy Land Foun­da­tion, the Islam­ic Asso­ci­a­tion for Pales­tine, and Hamas. The orga­ni­za­tion is led by Nihad Awad, one of three orig­i­nal founders, who, in Decem­ber 2023, stat­ed he was hap­py to see Pales­tini­ans break out of Gaza on Octo­ber 7, prompt­ing the Biden White House to dis­tance itself from CAIR.

CAIR has sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly cul­ti­vat­ed polit­i­cal influ­ence with­in Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty struc­tures and gov­ern­ment appoint­ments. CAIR col­lab­o­rat­ed with Jet­pac to pub­lish a direc­to­ry track­ing 189 Mus­lim elect­ed offi­cials across 30 states, includ­ing sev­er­al tied to Mus­lim Broth­er­hood orga­ni­za­tions, while Cal­i­for­nia Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty offi­cials work­ing for CAIR authored vot­ing guides rat­ing Demo­c­rat law­mak­ers includ­ing Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris. The orga­ni­za­tion con­grat­u­lat­ed Pres­i­dent-elect Biden on his vic­to­ry in Novem­ber 2020, vow­ing to hold his admin­is­tra­tion account­able on Mus­lim inclu­sion and civ­il rights issues, while Biden promised at an ISNA con­ven­tion that his admin­is­tra­tion would have Mus­lim Amer­i­cans serv­ing at every lev­el.

CAIR oper­ates sophis­ti­cat­ed state-lev­el leg­isla­tive advo­ca­cy cam­paigns tar­get­ing edu­ca­tion pol­i­cy and eth­nic stud­ies cur­ric­u­la. CAIR-Cal­i­for­nia mobi­lized 190 Mus­lims and allies to lob­by over 80 state law­mak­ers against leg­is­la­tion regard­ing Pales­tine dis­cus­sions in eth­nic stud­ies, demon­strat­ing coor­di­nat­ed pres­sure on state edu­ca­tion pol­i­cy. The orga­ni­za­tion spon­sors annu­al Mus­lim Day events at state capi­tols nation­wide, includ­ing Okla­homa, pro­vid­ing Mus­lim cit­i­zens oppor­tu­ni­ties to engage direct­ly with law­mak­ers on CAIR’s pol­i­cy pri­or­i­ties. Vir­ginia School Board mem­ber Abrar Omeish, daugh­ter of for­mer Mus­lim Amer­i­can Soci­ety pres­i­dent Esam Omeish, spoke at CAIR’s vir­tu­al Mus­lim Day at the Okla­homa State Capi­tol, illus­trat­ing the orga­ni­za­tion’s cul­ti­va­tion of Mus­lim Broth­er­hood-con­nect­ed offi­cials in local gov­ern­ment positions.

Exter­nal references:

• The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Amer­i­ca: The Dynam­ics of a Movement

• The Hamas Net­works in Amer­i­ca: A Short History

• Con­gres­sion­al Record: Coun­cil on Amer­i­can-Islam­ic Relations

Dis­claimer:

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) uti­lizes AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing the gen­er­a­tion of sum­maries for news items, intro­duc­tions, key points, and, often, the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, all images are gen­er­at­ed using AI and are intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.