Columbia student sues organization behind doxxing trucks sent to campuses roiled by Israel-Gaza protests
NEW YORK — A Columbia University student whose name and photograph were flashed on “doxxing” trucks over the past month is suing the conservative advocacy group responsible for mobile digital billboards he says wrongly called him one of “Columbia’s Leading Antisemites.”
Yusuf Hafez, a Columbia senior and a Muslim, was in class Oct. 25 when a friend told him his information was on display by the university’s main entrance in Morningside Heights, say documents in Manhattan Supreme Court. The doxxing truck returned to campus Nov. 1.
Hafez’s name was brandished on the website of the organization Accuracy in Media as among those it could “independently confirm” as student leaders from groups that signed a controversial letter days after Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7 attack on Israel. That letter suggested the violence was unsurprising, as all other means of Palestinian resistance were blocked.
Accuracy in Media also bought a website in Hafez’s name, the student’s lawyers said.
But according to his court complaint, Hafez, a former president of the Arab cultural student group Turath, was no longer in that position at the time the letter was issued, and had no involvement with its signing.
Hafez, a civil engineering student, alleges that Accuracy in Media defamed him with real consequences on his education and ability to get a job after graduation, while profiting off his name and causing extreme emotional distress.
“Because of his fears and emotional and physical distress, [Hafez] has been unable to go back to the Columbia campus, has been forced to attend classes remotely, and is unable to engage in his community groups, or social interactions,” read the complaint, brought by Hafez’s lawyers at Beldock Levine & Hoffman.
“He has been unable to take at least one exam, and his grades have suffered and will continue to suffer from his displacement from the university community,” the court complaint says.
Both Hafez’s name on Accuracy in Media’s list of “key figures propelling antisemitism at Columbia” and the eponymous website appeared Tuesday to be defunct, after his lawyers sought to restrain the organization from continuing to use it.
The lawsuit seeks compensatory damages and asks a judge to find the advocacy group violated students’ rights.
The legal challenge could have widespread implications on college campuses beyond Columbia.
Doxxing trucks from Accuracy in Media have been sighted in recent weeks at the City University of New York School of Law, and at Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania.
Students describe the mobile billboards as a form of harassment that is having a chilling effect on their free speech rights.
The lawyers hope to prove that the trucks in New York are illegally using Hafez’s name and image for “advertising and commercial purposes” without his consent.
The digital billboards and other elements of the campaign include Accuracy in Media’s logo and have been used to solicit donations and support its president, Adam Guillette, who is also a named defendant, according to the complaint.
Guillette has visited Columbia’s campus, video reviewed by the New York Daily News shows. Hafez’s lawyers say Guillette’s visits were meant “to continue his defamatory advertising campaign.”
After Guillette claimed Columbia students spray-painted the truck, he floated the idea on X, formerly known as Twitter, that “perhaps it’d be safer to send the billboards directly to their parents homes.”
Guillette is a former executive at the right-wing group Project Veritas, which has billed itself as a news organization and is famed for hidden-camera investigations that embarrass their subjects and have been widely denounced as entrapping and deceptive.
On Monday, Guillette announced that Accuracy in Media this week “is back in NYC exposing campus antisemites.”
Neither Accuracy in Media, nor Beldock Levine & Hoffman and Hafez through his lawyers, immediately returned a request for comment.
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