House ed panel: Universities make “shocking” concessions to anti-Israel protesters

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, at a press conference with Columbia students ahead of the committee’s full committee hearing with Columbia University leadership, April 2024. Credit: House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

by Andrew Bernard

(JNS) — Republicans on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce released the findings of their year-long investigation into campus antisemitism on Oct. 31, writing that universities offered “shocking concessions” to anti-Israel protesters.

The 122-page report — with 203 pages of appendices — concludes that university administrators across the country failed to enforce rules and “deliberately chose to withhold support from Jewish students.”

“For over a year, the American people have watched antisemitic mobs rule over so-called elite universities, but what was happening behind the scenes is arguably worse,” stated Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), the committee’s chairwoman.

“While Jewish students displayed incredible courage and a refusal to cave to the harassment, university administrators, faculty and staff were cowards, who fully capitulated to the mob and failed the students they were supposed to serve,” Foxx added.

Just days after the Hamas terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Foxx condemned pro-Hamas, antisemitic student protesters.

She announced a formal investigation into Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania on Dec. 7, which has since expanded to include eight other academic institutions.

The report is based on interviews with administrators from those universities and examination of more than 400,000 documents.

Among the concessions that administrators offered was Columbia University providing a “menu” of options to its campus protesters, including a “resilience fund” for Gaza.

The report includes internal emails and other communications between university administrators that suggest that some of them may have misled Congress in sworn testimony during a series of hearings that the committee held with university presidents.

At a May 27 hearing before the committee, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) asked Northwestern president Michael Schill if it would have been acceptable for the university to hire an anti-Zionist rabbi.

“I did not. I absolutely did not. I would never hire anyone based upon their views of being Zionist or anti-Zionist,” Schill said. “That is not what I do.”

The report describes that statement as “misleading at best.”

“Schill and other Northwestern leaders not only actively considered the encampment leaders’ demand to hire an anti-Zionist rabbi, but they expressed particular concern and sensitivity to language in a draft agreement that could address this point,” the report says. “An honest and candid response to Congresswoman Stefanik’s question would have acknowledged this.”

Democrats on the committee did not join their Republican colleagues in the report. Throughout the hearings, many Democrats questioned why the committee was not investigating discrimination against other groups and accused Republicans of seeking to defund the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. JNS sought comment from Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), the committee’s ranking member.

The Republican majority concluded in its report that many U.S. universities failed in their duty to combat Jew-hatred.

“University leaders shamefully and intentionally declined to provide the public support that their campuses’ Jewish communities called for,” the report says. “This serves as damning proof of the spinelessness, moral rot and double standards these so-called University leaders exhibited in their failure to appropriately respond to pervasive antisemitism on their campuses.”

The Orthodox Union Advocacy Center called the report “damning” and stated that it “underscores the need for a comprehensive and concrete response to antisemitism in higher education.”

“The congressional Education Committee’s findings make clear that the problem on college campuses goes beyond a handful of hateful student activists,” stated Nathan Diament, executive director for public policy at the Orthodox Union.

“There is an antisemitic rot deep in university administrations, and it needs to be cleaned out from top to bottom,” Diament added. “These universities are flagrantly violating federal law and must be held accountable. No more empty promises, no more stall tactics, no more bureaucratic stonewalling. Now is the time for Congress and the White House to act.”