Antisemitic Incident in Colorado School: Jewish Student Faces Verbal Abuse and Physical Assault

According to a complaint filed on June 11 by the Anti-Defamation League, a Colorado high school student allegedly wrapped a laptop charger around the neck of a Jewish peer while hurling an antisemitic insult.

The document claims that authorities at Southern Hills Middle School neglected to halt two years of antisemitic harassment targeting an eighth grader. This continued even after it was determined through investigations that the student was enduring a hostile environment.

The Title VI complaint meticulously outlines incidents of antisemitism, which escalated to the student being insulted as a “stupid k—” and strangled with a laptop cord.

As alleged in the complaint, in April 2025, students engaged in a game offensively dubbed “Jew touch tag” and made derogatory remarks labeling Jews as “dirty” and “contaminated.”

The laptop cord incident occurred in December 2025 when a student allegedly wrapped the cord around the Jewish student’s neck while he was sitting and dragged him backward from his chair while calling him a “stupid k—.”

The incident was severe enough that the Boulder Police Department was called to investigate, according to the complaint.

In April 2026, a classmate reportedly told the student, “Hitler should have killed all the Jews when he had the chance.” The pattern of harassment was so severe that the student stopped wearing his Star of David necklace, according to the ADL.

Following the laptop cord incident, there was a safety plan and protective order put in place, but the protective order “was violated on day one,” the ADL’s Vice President of Litigation James Pasch told Fox News’ Alicia Acuna on Tuesday.

“Despite the family’s pleas for help to stop the harassment, the school district failed to effectively address it, a clear violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. No family should have to fight this hard to ensure a Jewish child’s safety at school, and certainly no Jewish student should face the threat of assault or harassment because of their Jewish identity,” Pasch also said.

Pasch also revealed that the ADL recorded 167 antisemitic incidents in Colorado in 2025.

The ADL’s complaint is requesting an apology to the child’s family from the school district and a plan to coordinate antisemitism training for district students.’

ANTISEMITISM ON CAMPUS: THE HIGH SCHOOL FRONT LINE SINCE OCTOBER 7 

“When an event occurs like the one I described in a classroom that are witnessed by other students and then obviously talked about in the hallways and on the playgrounds by other student, it’s incumbent on the district to send a message out that talks about what occurred and addresses the antisemitism head on, right. I understand districts can’t talk about individual disciplinary issues with students but they can address underlying events of antisemitism that take place in their four walls and to speak out publicly against it and say this is not what district stands for and we’re not going to tolerate antisemitism in our building,” Pasch said.

“There’s probably no more solemn obligation that a school official and officials have than to keep our children safe when they walk through those doors, right? And if there’s a failure to do so because a student is being denied access to a safe education because of their Jewish identity, that makes them less safe, the entire Jewish community, less save. And the entire community of the Boulder Valley School District more unsafe, right? And so they’re obligated to step in and correct the issue,” he also added.

News Media contacted the Boulder Valley School District and Boulder Police Department for additional comment.