College presidents face down House Republicans over antisemitism response

The strife that’s consumed college campuses over the Israel-Hamas war is about to culminate in a classic Washington ritual: a public shaming.

Tensions over the nearly two-month-old conflict have ballooned into plenty of street protests, and few venues have drawn more media and political attention than rising antisemitism on the quad. And on Tuesday, the weight of Republican scrutiny will have clear targets as the presidents of Harvard, University of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts Institute of Technology testify on Capitol Hill.

The political glare being brought by House Education and the Workforce Chair Virginia Foxx comes at an awkward moment at the beginning of Claudine Gay’s tenure as Harvard’s first Black woman leader.

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), a Harvard alum, is calling on Gay to resign less than three months into the job. And alongside Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Stefanik led a letter of seven GOP Harvard alumni lawmakers demanding Gay disavow campus student groups who blame Israel for Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack.

Foxx has blasted campus demonstrations as “morally reprehensible.” The North Carolina Republican has vowed to demand accountability from campus leaders, and few members of the GOP conference will be able to resist the opportunity to needle some of the nation’s elite schools.

“They'll want to show they have a task force, they have an action plan,” Miriam Elman, executive director of the Academic Engagement Network, a nonprofit that trains college faculty and administrators to combat antisemitism, said of the university presidents. “Let's hold their feet to the fire and make sure that there really is followthrough.”

Republicans say they want the hearing to be bipartisan.

"We want these college presidents again to explain to us why they have not spoken out more forcefully against terrorism, against antisemitism," Foxx said in an interview with Fox News, adding that lawmakers at the hearing want to “look at a host of issues related to postsecondary education.”

Democrats are expected to criticize their Republican colleagues for setting up an opportunity to pile onto the intense scrutiny the university presidents already face. And they expect GOP lawmakers to steer some of the conversation into bashing diversity programs, and hammering the presidents over claims that foreign influence is responsible for campus antisemitism.

Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), a Harvard alum and top Democrat on the House education panel, has criticized Republicans for “fueling divisive and baseless culture wars” amid substantive concerns about antisemitism and Islamophobia.

Here’s what to know about Tuesday’s showdown:

Harvard and UPenn under investigation

UPenn was among the first groups of schools the Education Department launched an investigation into in November. Thecomplaint filed against the university alleges that the school has created a “hostile environment for its Jewish students” and argues that the response from the school’s president, Liz Magill, has been inadequate.

The complaint cited the school’s participation in a “Palestine Writes Festival” in September, which the Brandeis Center, which advocates for the civil rights of Jewish people, said invited speakers with a history of using antisemitic rhetoric, and spurred antisemitic graffiti and a Penn student’s “violent attack on Penn’s Hillel.”

About two weeks later — after the Oct. 7 attacks — students held rallies in support of Hamas’ actions. According to the complaint, the rallies chanted statements such as “There is only one solution: intifada resolution” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Some staff also reported getting antisemitic emails threatening violence.

At Harvard, an alumnus filed a complaint with the Education Department last month, according to Fox News, alleging Harvard discriminated against Jewish students on the basis of national origin.

The investigation is in response to an Oct. 18 incident at the Harvard Business School where students participated in a “die-in” in support of Palestinians and where students on opposing sides of the conflict clashed, according to people familiar with the investigation.

Gay, in response to the incident, said the school does “not condone — and will not ignore — antisemitism, Islamophobia, acts of harassment or intimidation, or threats of violence.” She also said the incident was being investigated by the FBI and the Harvard University Police Department.

MIT is not being investigated, but some lawmakers, including Cruz, have expressed disappointment in the Education Department for not yet investigating a protest that allegedly blocked Jewish students from getting to class.

Education Department officials have cautioned that just because a school is under investigation does not mean it has broken the law. The department has said it will update the list of investigations weekly.

Scrutinizing colleges’ foreign ties

Republicans are expected to hammer campus leaders on Tuesday over claims that foreign influence is responsible for campus antisemitism.

Lawmakers have signaled that they want to use the hearing to spur momentum for the DETERRENT Act. The legislation — H.R. 5933, the Defending Education Transparency and Ending Rogue Regimes Engaging in Nefarious Transactions (DETERRENT) Act — would tighten college foreign gift reporting requirements under Section 117 of the Higher Education Act.

Under the law, colleges are required to report foreign gifts and contracts valued at more than $250,000. The bill, however, would lower that reporting threshold to $50,000, with some stricter $0 thresholds for “countries and entities of concern." It would also prohibit institutions from entering into contracts with “foreign entities of concern or countries of concern” unless they receive a waiver from the department.

Three Democrats on the committee supported the legislation, which is slated to be taken up for a floor vote as soon as Wednesday.

This legislation ties into this hearing because of a report released in November that draws a correlation between foreign funds and “heightened levels of intolerance towards Jews, open inquiry, and free expression.” The report, which has been cited mostly by Republican lawmakers and met with skepticism from some Democrats, was brought up at an earlier hearing about campus antisemitism.

Some lawmakers have also gone as far as accusing institutions, including MIT, of being more lenient on foreign students after protests that have resulted in suspensions.

“Jewish students at MIT are saying they are afraid to be at school, that they do not feel safe,” Cruz said in a November interview. “And, absurdly, the administration of MIT, they said, they’re not going to respond by expelling the antisemitic protesters who are stopping other students from going to class. Why? Because if they did, they would lose their student visas and have to go back home. In other words, because they are foreigners, they are not Americans who are violently threatening other students, this university is giving them special status and saying, please continue.”

What Jewish and Muslim advocacy groups expect

Jewish advocacy groups already see hauling the presidents of the elite colleges to Capitol Hill as a victory for their students.

“The very fact that the hearing is going to take place is as important as anything that actually happens at the hearing,” said Kenneth Marcus, who led the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights under the George W. Bush and Trump administrations and now leads the Brandeis Center. The center has filed several complaints against institutions on behalf of Jewish students.

“This sends a really strong message that Congress is watching very closely what universities do when it comes to addressing antisemitism,” he said.

Arab and Muslim groups, on the other hand, say the hearing will likely misconstrue criticism of Israel as antisemitism.

“They're going to attempt to get these university presidents to adopt that conflation, and that's going to cause further harm for the Arab and Palestinian students,” said Abed Ayoub, executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

“We've already seen how students are getting targeted,” he added. “We anticipate that the House members are unjustly going to push against Palestinian and Arab student groups … And it's going to be the civil attack on our community and our students, and it's going to set some very dangerous precedent, and rhetoric is going to be coming out of ignorance.”

Dana Nickel contributed to this report.