Why Jews Are Still Turning to the Courts

This week, I sat in the Al Green Theatre at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival and watched Sapiro v. Ford: The Jew Who Sued Henry Ford. Like many in the audience, I expected a documentary about history. But as the father of a Jewish student now suing her own university over its failure to protect Jewish students, I could not watch it as history alone. Instead, I watched something disturbingly current.

The film tells the story of Aaron Sapiro, a Jewish lawyer who took on Henry Ford, one of the most powerful men in America. Ford was not simply an industrialist. He was a cultural icon. His wealth gave him influence. His name gave his opinions authority.

And he used that authority to spread hate.

Ford bought the The Dearborn Independent. Through the newspaper, Ford spread some of the oldest antisemitic tropes in history, portraying Jews as secret manipulators of finance, politics, culture and international war. The hatred was packaged, repeated and distributed with the same discipline that had made his name synonymous with modern production.

The scale was staggering. At its peak, The Dearborn Independent reached hundreds of thousands of readers across the United States. It was sold at newsstands and circulated through Ford dealerships.

Aaron Sapiro became one of Ford’s targets cast as part of a supposed Jewish conspiracy.

So in 1925, Sapiro sued.

His lawsuit did not end antisemitism. No lawsuit can. But it did accomplish something important. It forced a reckoning. After years of litigation, Ford shut down The Dearborn Independent. One of the most influential engines of antisemitic propaganda in North America was brought to a halt.

A century later, the machinery of hate looks different, and in many ways more pervasive.

Antisemitism in 2026 no longer requires a single industrialist, a newspaper empire or a network of dealerships. It moves through social media platforms, anonymous accounts, encrypted chats, recommendation algorithms and viral content. It spreads online, hardens in digital echo chambers and then spills into the physical world through masked demonstrations, campus intimidation and public displays of hate.

The technology has changed. The institutional challenge has not.

Watching Sapiro’s story, I could not help thinking about my daughter, Liat Schwartz, who is suing Toronto Metropolitan University.

Liat did not arrive at university looking for a fight. She arrived as a student, hoping to learn, build community and participate in campus life like anyone else. She became involved in Jewish student life and worked to create space for identity, dialogue and belonging. But like too many Jewish students in Canada, she found that the promises universities make about inclusion and safety can become conditional when the students asking for protection are Jewish.

As her father, I have watched what that does to a young person. I have watched a student who should have been focused on classes, friendships and the future instead have to think about security, institutional silence and whether her university would enforce its own rules. No parent sends a child to university expecting her to become a test case for whether Jewish students are entitled to equal protection.

Students are asking for what every other student is promised: the ability to walk onto campus, attend events, express their identity and participate in university life without harassment, intimidation or fear.

Universities cannot control every social media post, every protest sign or every political slogan. But they can control their own conduct. They can decide whether harassment policies are enforced consistently. They can determine whether Jewish students receive the same protection afforded to every other community. They can choose whether principles are applied universally or selectively.

Like Sapiro, Liat is not under the illusion that a lawsuit can eliminate antisemitism. Courts cannot eradicate prejudice. But they can establish accountability when institutions fail to uphold their own obligations. They can ask a simple question that universities should be able to answer: were Jewish students protected according to the same standards applied to everyone else?

That is why Jewish students are once again turning to the courts.

A zero-tolerance approach to hate should not be controversial. It should be the minimum standard of any institution that claims to value dignity and safety. Yet too often, universities respond to antisemitism with process, ambiguity and delay. They issue statements about inclusion while Jewish students are left to navigate the consequences of exclusion. They celebrate diversity while treating Jewish vulnerability as complicated.

That double standard is corrosive. It tells Jewish students that their safety is negotiable. It tells them that the rules exist, but may not apply with the same force when the hatred is directed at them. And it tells the broader community that antisemitism can be managed as a reputational issue rather than confronted as a moral and institutional failure.

That is what links Sapiro’s case to the cases emerging on Canadian campuses today.

Aaron Sapiro did not defeat antisemitism. But he challenged the machinery that amplified it. He forced one of the most admired men in America to confront the consequences of using his platform to vilify Jews.

Today, the machinery is different. It is more decentralized and harder to contain. But it still depends on institutions that look away, platforms that amplify and authorities that hesitate. Hate does not become powerful merely because it is spoken. It becomes powerful when it is organized, repeated, normalized and left unanswered.

The lesson remains relevant. Hate rarely disappears on its own. It must be confronted by those with the authority to stop it. And when institutions refuse to act, the courts become one of the few places left where accountability can still be demanded.

That was true in Aaron Sapiro’s time. It is true again now.