GOP to grill universities ‘beyond the Ivy League’ about antisemitism

A college junior on Tuesday described how he and a friend were attacked and beaten when they advocated for Israel during a campus protest last year, and House Republicans standing with him vowed to do “whatever it takes” to end campus antisemitism.

As the House Education Committee prepares for another hearing on the issue - meetings that, in the past, have led Ivy League presidents to resign - the stakes have only intensified. The Trump administration has threatened scores of colleges with investigations and frozen billions of dollars in federal funding to several universities. Rep. Lisa C. McClain (Michigan), the House Republican conference chairwoman, said at a news conference Tuesday that if the students behind her didn’t feel safe on campus, “maybe the university endowments shouldn’t feel safe.”

On Wednesday the committee plans to question three college presidents in a hearing it calls “Beyond the Ivy League: Stopping the Spread of Antisemitism on American Campuses.”

Last spring the committee also summoned non-Ivy presidents, in a hearing with leaders of Rutgers and Northwestern universities and UCLA, after a year of heated protests over the Israel-Gaza war. This academic year has been much quieter at most schools, but there are still tensions and incidents in some places. Debates continue over the balance between the First Amendment rights of protesters and the rights of Jewish students to an educational environment that is safe and free from hostility.

The presidents of Haverford College, DePaul University and California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo have been summoned to testify Wednesday.

“No institution is free from the oversight that we are going to give on this committee,” Education Committee Chairman Tim Walberg (R-Michigan) said Tuesday. “You’re all under the gun to do what’s right.”

Rep. Burgess Owens (R-Utah) compared the antisemitism to the racism of the 1960s in the Deep South. “What we’re seeing on college campuses today isn’t activism. It’s intimidation, it’s harassment, in many cases, pure, unfiltered hatred of Jewish people.” He drew applause when he said, “This is not a free-speech issue. It’s a public safety issue. It’s a moral issue. And every school that allows this chaos to continue needs to lose all federal funds.”

Outside the news conference in the Rayburn House Office Building, where people were packed in, U.S. Capitol Police officers separated pro-Palestinian protesters from pro-Israeli attendees who applauded many of the statements made by committee members. Protesters wearing kaffiyehs held up pieces of pita bread as people walked out, and called out, “The children of Gaza deserve to be fed!” and “Let the children live!” and “It is not antisemitic to say that!”

When protesters were removed from the room earlier, people had heckled them: “Go to Hamas!”

Some prominent groups pushed back Tuesday against Republican efforts. The American Jewish Committee and multiple higher-education organizations announced a joint commitment to address antisemitism, and they called on the Trump administration to do so “in ways that preserve academic freedom, respect due process, and strengthen the government-campus scientific partnership that has made America stronger, healthier, and safer.”

Schools are committed to continuing “consequential reform and transparent action to root out antisemitism and all other forms of hate and prejudice from our campuses,” they wrote.

The statement from the American Council on Education, the Association of American Universities, and several other groups including those representing public universities and community colleges, noted that the federal government had recently taken steps in the name of combating antisemitism that endanger research grants, academic freedom and institutional autonomy.

“AJC, the global advocacy organization for the Jewish people, believes that when these actions are overly broad, they imperil science and innovation, and ultimately detract from the necessary fight against antisemitism while threatening the global preeminence of America’s research universities and colleges,” they wrote.

Jake Lubin, a junior at Northwestern, said there had been recent disturbing vandalism on campus that included the upside-down triangle symbol Hamas has used for targets. He also said he has protested the war in Israel with Israelis, so he understands the right to protest. “We just want to help Northwestern get back to a place where Jews and Palestinians and Israelis alike” who may have common cause with ending the war “can speak to one another instead of hurling slogans at one another.” He said he was aware of how strongly the Trump administration had responded to the issue, but said, “I don’t support cutting funds to what I see as really valuable research.”

Lubin was one of a group of Jewish students from Northwestern who spent Monday and Tuesday meeting with lawmakers and federal officials on Capitol Hill and at the White House. Another student, Samuel Feldman, said he was hoping for “a little bit more federal government oversight to make sure that university administration truly does enforce the rules that they purport to enforce.” He said a mask ban, ID checks and other measures to help ensure protesters are students would be helpful.

Feldman said that he appreciated that federal leaders were taking the issue seriously, but that as an engineering student, he had several projects terminated or frozen because of lack of funding due to the Trump administration’s actions.

A White House official said last month that $790 million in funding to Northwestern had been frozen in connection with federal civil rights investigations.

The committee has also asked the president of Northwestern University, Michael Schill, to answer more questions about “a surge of antisemitic incidents at Northwestern, including assaults and harassment of Jewish students.”

Last May, the committee opened an investigation into Northwestern as part of its broader scrutiny of campus antisemitism, and Schill testified about changes that would be made to address the problem. Walberg, the Education Committee chairman, wrote in his letter last month that it was unclear that there had been any meaningful discipline for antisemitism.

University officials announced this spring many changes that have been put in place, including mandatory antisemitism training, new guidance on demonstrations and displays, prohibitions of encampments, more robust enforcement of rules, and the hiring of additional police officers. Although Northwestern has made significant progress, they wrote, the university “remains vigilant and will continue to do what is necessary to make our campus safe.”