University leaders reject Republican attacks on campus antisemitism

Boston Globe

3 days ago

On Tuesday, Republicans accused the university leaders of fostering an antisemitic climate and failing to rein in professors and students the lawmakers said were antisemitic. Democrats on the committee argued the hearing was part of a crackdown on speech that attempted to scapegoat academia for a broader societal problem.
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The university leaders, meanwhile, seemed to have learned from the past. They attempted, with apparent success, to avoid the kinds of viral moments that have characterized previous antisemitism hearings and brought down other university presidents.
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And they tried to walk a fine line. They said that language seeming to call for violence against Jews was unacceptable. But they largely declined to discuss the details of discipline for individual incidents and argued that professors and students have speech rights.
Rich Lyons, who has been chancellor of Berkeley for a year, challenged the committee at times. He pointed out that not all pro-Palestinian beliefs were antisemitic and described a professor who was criticized for making antisemitic statements as a 'fine scholar.'
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'If someone is expressing pro-Palestinian beliefs, that's not necessarily antisemitism,' he told lawmakers.
Robert M. Groves, the interim president of Georgetown University, said his institution was among the first to condemn the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. He also noted that as a Jesuit university, Georgetown focuses on interfaith dialogue and employs many different faith leaders.
'Georgetown is not perfect,' he said in the hearing, but since Oct. 7 it has not experienced violence, encampments, or city police actions on campus.
Lawmakers seemed especially to single out the City University of New York over campus protests and staff members supportive of Palestinian rights.
Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, said that Ramzi Kassem, a CUNY law professor, should be disciplined or fired for serving as a lawyer for Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent resident who was detained by the Trump administration, which continues to seek to deport him.
She attacked CUNY for hiring a former employee of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights organization, inaccurately suggesting that CAIR had been a 'co-conspirator in a terrorist financing case.' (The group was listed as an 'unindicted co-conspirator or joint venturer' in a case against a charity, the Holy Land Foundation, along with more than 200 other groups and individuals. It was not accused of a crime.)
Stefanik also highlighted an episode where a swastika was drawn on a university building, arguing that a school administrator had been dismissive about concerns that it was not removed sooner.
Félix V. Matos Rodríguez, the university's chancellor, defended the school and its employees, saying, 'Antisemitism has no place at CUNY,' and noting that the offensive emblem had remained to allow the police department to respond.
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Responding to Stefanik's attacks Tuesday, CAIR's national deputy director, Edward Ahmed Mitchell, said the 'spirit of Joseph McCarthy is alive and well.'
College leaders said they had made changes to address antisemitic behavior, but also defended free speech protections for students and faculty and stressed the importance of civil discourse on divisive issues. They said they had tightened protest policies, bolstered antisemitism training, and focused on making campus life more welcoming to Jews.
The Republican-led hearings Tuesday were the latest in a series that began before the second Trump administration, months after the Hamas attack and the start of the war in Gaza. Earlier hearings with Ivy League university leaders turned into a disastrous spectacle for the educators.
Since then, Republicans have widened their lens to other kinds of educational institutions, which they say also failed to keep Jewish students safe when pro-Palestinian protests swept campuses around the country.
It was not precisely clear why the three universities at Tuesday's hearing were selected. All have faced tensions on their campuses related to student safety and free expression since the Hamas attack, as have many colleges.
The Republican lines of attack echo those of President Trump, who has taken away major sums of money from top universities, arguing they have not done enough to curb antisemitism. A federal task force on antisemitism has singled out many institutions for investigation, and federal agents have detained international students, like Kahlil, who were involved in pro-Palestinian activism.
Representative Tim Walberg, Republican of Michigan, the committee's chair, blamed episodes of antisemitism on a series of factors Republicans have long railed against, including centers for Middle East studies, faculty unions, foreign funding and diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
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'The DEI ideology embraced by so many university bureaucrats categorizes Jews as white oppressors and therefore, excuses, or even justifies, antisemitic harassment,' Walberg said.
The committee's ranking Democrat, Representative Robert C. Scott of Virginia, criticized Republicans for what he portrayed as a blinkered focus on antisemitism that excluded consideration of other issues.
'Since this committee's first antisemitism hearing on December 2023,' Scott said, 'we've not held a single hearing addressing racism, xenophobia, sexism, Islamophobia, or other challenges affecting other student groups on American college campuses.'