GOP smells blood in the water in elite school antisemitism controversy

Republicans hostile to the way elite universities shape the nation’s cultural and political debates are smelling blood in the water after a disastrous hearing in which the presidents of three schools refused to say students who called for the genocide of Jews would be disciplined.

One of the presidents, Liz Magill of the University of Pennsylvania, has already resigned, and Republicans are seeking to stoke pressure on the other two who testified last week, Claudine Gay of Harvard University and Sally Kornbluth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

“One down. Two to go,” Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), whose questioning of the three presidents went viral after they gave evasive answers to her queries, said of Magill’s resignation.

The House Education Committee has now announced a full investigation of antisemitism at universities, signaling GOP lawmakers have no intention of letting the issue quiet down anytime soon. 

GOP lawmakers who have long decried the handling of America’s top schools see last week’s hearing as a crucial moment of truth, and they want a price to be paid for it.

“Republicans have been trying this for a long time,” said Ryan Enos, professor of government and faculty associate in the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard, one of the schools under fire, when asked if Republicans could use the momentum against higher education to advance certain policy proposals.

One of the most popular GOP education targets in recent years has been schools’ diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, which specifically came under fire at the Education panel hearing, with some conservatives blaming them in part for rising antisemitism. Other GOP lawmakers threatened to go after the schools’ prodigious federal grants for science and research if they failed to mend their ways.

Enos said that “Republicans have been finding reasons to chip away” at higher education “over time.” 

Chairwoman for the House Committee on Education and the Workforce Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) announced last week her panel would be investigating the three schools after their presidents said at the hearing that it would depend on the context if a call for the genocide of Jewish people would be considered harassment on campus. 

Although those three are private institutions, Foxx said in an interview that she would be willing to cut public funds from colleges that are not doing enough to combat antisemitism.  

“We cannot tolerate taxpayer dollars going to institutions that allow for antisemitism and for calling for genocide of the Jews,” she said.  

In announcing the formal probe, Foxx had warned that “other universities should expect investigations as well, as their litany of similar failures has not gone unnoticed.”

“This investigation will include substantial document requests, and the Committee will not hesitate to utilize compulsory measures including subpoenas if a full response is not immediately forthcoming,” she said in a statement.

More than 70 lawmakers signed a bipartisan letter calling for the three presidents to be removed.  

“I mean, a number of Democrats at that hearing were quite critical of the university presidents and their institutions’ responses to rampant antisemitism on campus,” said Jay Greene, senior research fellow in the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation. “This is not a ‘Republicans pounce’ kind of moment.” 

But Republicans have for a long time argued higher education receives too much money and wastes it on bureaucracy. 

“Universities have been overly or have heavily pursued a diversity, equity and inclusion agenda that is based in critical theory, and DEI bureaucracy has metastasized in its size and also in its influence on campus so that it has made certain kinds of speech impermissible,” Greene said, adding the shifts have been “enforcing an ideological orthodoxy on campus.” 

He argued that it took so long for others to recognize the growing problem in higher education because the “nature of politics is that until problems become very severe, people tend not to be motivated for action, but the problem has become severe enough and obvious enough.” 

But others say Stefanik’s line of questioning and the nature of the hearing itself were not a genuine attempt at dealing with antisemitism and put the presidents in a no-win situation.

“I think very obviously, [Harvard President Claudine Gay] satisfied nobody with those comments. But the thing to keep in mind is, of course, that hearing was designed in a way that wasn’t going to satisfy anybody,” Enos said.  

“I think it’s very clear this is part of an agenda that is just trying to politicize higher education,” he added.  

More than 600 Harvard faculty members signed a petition in support of Gay amid calls for her to resign.

“The hearing was deeply politicized and was clearly part of a strategy to discredit institutions of higher education,” the 14 faculty members who started the petition said in a statement.  

Stefanik condemned Harvard’s faculty for the petition.

“What a truly sad and deplorable state of affairs for the faculty and administration of our most ‘esteemed’ institutions of higher learning when instead of focusing on protecting the safety and security of Jewish students under historic antisemitic attacks with a crystal clear condemnation of calls for genocide of Jews, they are instead obsessively focused on their dislike and entitled disdain for those with opposing political beliefs,” Stefanik said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

On Monday, the executive committee of Harvard’s Alumni Association announced its full support for Gay, pointing to her apology for the House testimony later last week.

Free speech advocates have also defended the presidents’ comments, saying legally that type of call would depend on the context. But they are sympathetic to those who are voicing frustrations. 

“Of course, one can understand the frustration of critics who rightly observe how quickly college administrators — including those at Harvard, Penn, and MIT — will reach for speech codes when certain disfavored views are expressed, yet don the cloak of free speech when they are more sympathetic to the speech at issue,” the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression said in a statement.       

While the hearing has caused anger toward the three high-profile schools, some are doubtful that any hyperpartisan changes to the university system will become reality.  

Jon Fansmith, senior vice president of government relations and national engagement at the American Council on Education, said he is hopeful that lawmakers “can bifurcate their feelings about how an institution or some institutions are doing in one area” such as the fight on antisemitism “versus what are the best policy options out there” for other issues.