House Republicans lambasted private elite colleges and some state flagship universities for how they’ve handled pro-Palestinian protests in a new report in which they argue that antisemitism has engulfed college campuses and administrators prioritized “terrorist sympathizers” over the Jewish community.
In the scathing 325-page report released Thursday, Republicans on House Education and Workforce Committee detailed the findings of their yearlong investigation into antisemitism at 11 colleges. Most of the findings reiterated many of the same points they’ve been making publicly since Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Jon Fansmith, senior vice president for government relations and national engagement at the American Council on Education, said the report is a “wholly partisan effort” that wasted a significant chance for productive analysis.
“We had an opportunity through hearings, and now through 300-plus pages of report language, to look at, what are solutions? [To] identify problems, identify best practices [and] think about ways to actually directly help students, especially Jewish students,” Fansmith said. But the final report is merely a continuation of the same script, and “it’s unfortunate,” he added.
Other higher education experts and lobbyists say the report demonstrates the weaponization of antisemitism and overlooks the fine line between protecting free speech and civil rights. They also questioned the role of the federal government in overseeing colleges.
“This report is further proof that the House Committee is attempting to harness these painful divides to interfere with, undermine, and delegitimize American higher education in the minds of the public,” American Association of University Professors president Todd Wolfson said in a statement to Inside Higher Ed. “Government interference with higher education is a perilous path and this must be a moment of clarity for faculty, staff, and students on our campuses.”
Led by Chair Virginia Foxx, a North Carolina Republican, the committee received more than 400,000 pages of documents as part of its wide-ranging investigation into protest management, disciplinary actions and efforts to protect Jewish students, faculty and staff. In the end, the committee said they found that university leaders made “shocking concessions” to protesters; intentionally declined to support Jewish students, faculty and staff; failed to impose meaningful discipline; and openly expressed hostility toward the idea of congressional oversight.
“University administrators, faculty, and staff were cowards who fully capitulated to the mob and failed the students they were supposed to serve,” Foxx said in a news release. “It is time for the executive branch to enforce the laws and ensure colleges and universities restore order and guarantee that all students have a safe learning environment.”
The report stopped short of finding that colleges violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color or national origin—and covers discrimination based on shared ancestry, which includes antisemitism and Islamophobia. Finding violations is not up to Congress, though. That is under the purview of the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights. Colleges that violate the law could ultimately lose federal funding, though that’s an unlikely outcome.
Still, the committee wrote that its findings show “an environment hostile to Jewish students likely in violation of Title VI” and chided the Education Department for not doing enough to hold colleges accountable. Ultimately, though, the committee said its findings don’t amount to “conclusive judgments on violations.”
This investigation is one of several currently underway in the House. The report will contribute to the broader House-wide probe.
“The committee’s findings indicate the need for a fundamental reassessment of federal support for postsecondary institutions that have failed to meet their obligations to protect Jewish students, faculty, and staff, and to maintain a safe and uninterrupted learning environment for all students,” the report said.
‘McCarthyism Alive and Well’
Although critiques of universities’ external-facing actions have been commonplace since campus turmoil first began Oct. 7, 2023, the report sheds some new light on what was happening behind the scenes.
Some of the most notable findings include how the college presidents reacted after being interrogated on the Hill.
Memos from a Dec. 10 board meeting at Harvard University show contempt for Congress from then-president Claudine Gay, who was called to testify at the Dec. 5 hearing along with the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Records show that she began her remarks acknowledging her failure to speak out clearly against antisemitism. But Gay then quickly shifted focus to Representative Elise Stefanik, a Republican from New York and Harvard alum who sharply criticized the Harvard leader at the hearing. Gay said it was hard to watch the university’s “moral core” be called into question “esp[ecially] by someone who is a purveyor of hate” and “supporter of proudboys” [sic].
At Penn, then–board chair Scott Bok told former University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill that the Republican officials calling for Magill’s resignation were “so easily purchased.”
Lawmakers also cited a text exchange between former Columbia University president Minouche Shafik and Board of Trustees co-chair Claire Shipman, shortly after Shafik’s hearing April 17. Shipman wrote about how New York Times coverage of the event had “inoculated” the Manhattan Ivy from the same “capital [sic] hill nonsense and threat” as Harvard.
(Magill and Gay both resigned shortly after the first hearing. Shafik also resigned, but five months passed between the hearing and her announcement.)
The Republicans argue that these comments show how administrators were more concerned about public image than confronting antisemitism and had an insubordinate hostility toward congressional oversight.
But to Edward Ahmed Mitchell, national deputy director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, there’s a sense of sardonicism to these conclusions.
“The irony is that for years, Republicans in Congress complained about federal involvement in the education system,” Ahmed Mitchell said. “Now they suddenly want federal intrusion because they think the federal government can be weaponized to force colleges and universities to silence students and college professors who speak up for Palestinian human rights.”
“This is McCarthyism alive and well,” he added.
Fansmith believes that there is certainly a federal role to be played in ensuring accountability for colleges and universities, noting that the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights has opened more than 100 investigations into alleged violations of Title VI. But that oversight has limits.
“These efforts have less to do with true accountability or an appropriate response … and [are] more an effort to exert influence over campuses—to try to force them to move in directions that meet the policy goals of one group or another,” he said.
Shattering Ivory Towers
Republicans and Jewish advocacy organizations applauded the committee’s efforts to hold colleges accountable.
Kenneth Marcus, founder of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and former head of the OCR during the Trump administration, said the report uses the power of the congressional bully pulpit to amplify what Jewish organizations have been saying for years.
“The central message,” he said, “is that many college administrators have been deliberately indifferent to the rise of antisemitism on their campuses.”
But what’s even more important than the committee’s language, Marcus added, is the documents themselves. Litigators will be “poring” through them, he noted. About half of the report includes snippets from documents collected by the committee.
“Government investigators should do so as well,” he said. “The documents are, at a minimum, a public embarrassment for many colleges and, perhaps worse, a potential source of liability.”
Stefanik said in a news release that the report shows “moral bankruptcy” of “once ‘elite’ higher education institutions” and that they will suffer the consequences.
“These universities are in for a reckoning for decades to come that will shatter their ivory towers,” she said.
Meanwhile, a Northwestern University official said the report “ignores the hard work our community has put in since [the hearing last spring].” “We are continuing to add resources and expand educational opportunities in line with our commitment to protect our community while facilitating the productive exchange of ideas,” wrote Jon Yates, vice president of global marketing and communications. “The University objects to the unfair characterizations of our provost and valued members of our faculty based on isolated and out-of-context communications [and] unequivocally stands behind them and their work on behalf of our students.”
Other colleges and universities named in the report, including Harvard and the University of California, Los Angeles, generally declined to comment directly on the report and instead pointed to changes that have and will be made related to addressing antisemitism on campus.
“Under the university’s new leadership, we have established a centralized Office of Institutional Equity to address all reports of discrimination and harassment, appointed a new Rules Administrator, and strengthened the capabilities of our Public Safety Office,” a Columbia university spokesperson wrote in an email. “We are committed to applying the rules fairly, consistently, and efficiently.”
Inside Higher Ed also reached out to Rutgers University, MIT and Penn—all of which were involved in hearings and included in the report—but didn’t hear back.
