The GOP should clean its own house before addressing university antisemitism

The testimony of three elite university presidents at a House hearing on antisemitism has unleashed a firestorm of criticism from alumni, donors and lawmakers, demanding their removal. Elizabeth Magill of the University of Pennsylvania has already resigned. 

While the hearing raised valid questions about the boundary between free speech and incitement, grandstanding by Republican representatives was disingenuous given their own party’s track record on antisemitism and other forms of bigotry. 

The most heated exchange took place between Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and Harvard President Claudine Gay.  

“Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules on bullying and harassment?” Stefanik asked. It was a trap, and Gay stepped into it. 

Instead of forcefully condemning overt antisemitism, Gay explained the complexities of university disciplinary codes. 

She failed to see that Republicans were more interested in scripting the hearings into a narrative that portrays colleges and universities as elite liberal institutions out of touch with the American people than in fighting antisemitism on campuses.   

Other panelists piled on. “Here’s your chance to tell America who’s gotten fired, what organizations you’d kick off your campuses — does anybody want to jump in?” Rep. Aaron Bean (R-Fla.) asked the three women. 

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), the panel chair, engaged in absurd hyperbole, declaring that “After the events of the past two months, it’s clear that rabid antisemitism and the university are two ideas that cannot be cleaved from one another.” 

Not a single panelist raised the question of Islamophobia, which has also increased on college campuses. Will that be the focus of a future congressional hearing? Don’t hold your breath. 

The sanctimonious statements of these representatives ring hollow amid the silence of Republican leaders in the face of inflammatory rhetoric from members of their own party, especially the former president. 

Antisemitism was rising in the U.S. long before Oct. 7, and the instigators were not university administrators, faculty or students. The Anti-Defamation League documented 3,697 antisemitic incidents in 2022, a 36 percent increase over the previous year. Only 219 of these incidents occurred on college or university campuses. 

In January, Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin laid the blame at the feet of Donald Trump, his Maga followers and all Republicans who refused to call them out for his hate-filled rhetoric. 

“Right-wing Republicans have their fingerprints all over the rise of antisemitism in the United States,” she asserted. 

When Rep. Marjorie Tayor Greene (R-Ga.) compared President Biden to Hitler and mask mandates to the Holocaust, House Republicans condemned her remarks but refused to censor, let own expel her. 

“Republicans are tolerant of the Jew-hatred of Marjorie Taylor Greene,” a “Jerusalem Post” opinion piece proclaimed. 

After Trump dined at Mar Lago with white supremacist Nick Fuentes in November 2022, PBS News Hour asked 57 prominent Republican members of Congress if they would condemn the meeting. More than half, including Stefanik, did not respond. 

Yet the same Republicans who refuse to discipline their party members or even speak out against their hateful rhetoric excoriate university administrators for not punishing students. 

Apparently, politicians have an unfettered right to free speech, but 18 to 22-year-old students don’t. 

Any discussion over freedom of speech in academia must be part of a broader national conversation.  

When they wrote the First Amendment, the framers could not have imagined how the internet and social media would revolutionize the spread of ideas. 

Hatemongers have always existed, but until recently, they could not reach a mass audience. Even a letter to the editor of a small-town newspaper had to be well-written and factually accurate.  

Now anyone can publish almost anything online. Soon after acquiring Twitter, Elon Musk reactivated the accounts of known neo-Nazis.  

Small wonder some students cross the line from criticism into intolerance. What example are public figures providing them?  

Campuses must be safe spaces for all students. They must also be open environments in which even difficult subjects can be discussed in an atmosphere of tolerance and respect. These precepts are not mutually exclusive. 

According to a recent survey, fewer than half of Jewish students feel safe on American campuses, and that number probably mirrors anxiety among Jews in the general population.   

Antisemitism is not a problem confined to colleges and universities; it is deeply embedded in American culture. Still, educators must do more to ensure that campuses are safe spaces for all students. 

Rules governing organizations can be tightened, not every speaker whom a group wishes to host should be invited to campus and some faculty need to be reminded that a lectern is not a bully pulpit. 

However, trustees and administrators must be very careful not to stifle free expression. The three university presidents were right about one thing: Student codes of conduct clearly distinguish between speech and action.  

Overt threats, intimidation and verbal harassment should be grounds for disciplinary action, but controversial comments, even those some students find offensive, should not.  

Otherwise, institutions of higher learning will be vulnerable to the censorship forced upon schools and library districts across the country.  

In many cases, a small group of parents or even a single individual has gotten curriculum changed and books banned. In Owasso, Okla., a complaint by one father got more than 3,000 young adult graphic novels removed from district libraries. It does not require a great leap of imagination to envision a scenario in which a group of students complains about course content merely because it upsets them. 

The University of North Carolina’s board of governors refused to approve tenure for MacArthur fellow and Pulitzer Prize winner Nikole Hannah-Jones because of conservative complaints about her work on the New York Times’ 1619 Project, which examines the history of slavery in America.  

Stefanik and her colleagues are right to raise concerns about intolerance on American campuses. But if they really want to root out antisemitism and bigotry, they should start by cleaning up their own party. 

Tom Mockaitis is a professor of history at DePaul University and the author of “Violent Extremists: Understanding the Domestic and International Terrorist Threat.”