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Reuters
7 hours ago
- Politics
- Reuters
US Republicans grill university leaders in latest House antisemitism hearing
July 15 (Reuters) - The leaders of three U.S. universities testified before a House of Representatives panel on Tuesday about what they have done to combat antisemitism on campus, saying they were committed to stamping out hatred while protecting academic freedom. At Tuesday's three-hour hearing, Georgetown University interim President Robert Groves, City University of New York Chancellor Felix Matos Rodriguez, and University of California, Berkeley Chancellor Richard Lyons came under sharp fire from Republicans. Many of them echoed President Donald Trump's recent attacks on universities, which he has described as "infested with radicalism," and questioned whether the presidents were doing enough to protect Jewish students and faculty. "The genesis of this antisemitism, this hatred that we're seeing across our country, is coming from our universities," said Representative Burgess Owens, a Utah Republican. It was the latest in a series of hearings about antisemitism on campus in which university leaders testified before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which is tasked with higher education oversight. Democrats on the panel used the session to question the Trump administration's gutting of the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, which probes incidents of antisemitism and other forms of discrimination. That has led to a backlog in investigations at a time when Republicans say universities are not doing enough to combat antisemitism. The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for the administration to resume dismantling the entire department, part of Trump's bid to shrink the federal role in education and give more control to the states. Representative Mark Takano, a California Democrat, called the hearing a "kangaroo court." "This scorched earth warfare against higher education will endanger academic freedom, innovative research and international cooperation for generations to come," Takano said, referring to the administration's efforts to cut off funding to some schools, including Harvard and Columbia, and impose other sanctions. University leaders have come under fire from both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian communities for their handling of protests that broke out after the 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas militants and conflict that emerged from it. On some campuses, clashes erupted between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel demonstrators, spawning antisemitic and Islamophobic rhetoric and assaults in some cases. During the hearing, the university leaders were repeatedly asked about their responses to antisemitic actions by faculty or affiliated scholars. Representative Mary Miller, an Illinois Republican, asked Berkeley's Lyons about a February event in which speakers "repeatedly denied that Israeli women were gang-raped by Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023, and argued that Israel was weaponizing feminism." Lyons said the online event in question was organized by a faculty member but the comments that Miller cited did not come from the Berkeley faculty member. He said the school anticipated that some of the ideas discussed at the event would prove controversial. "I did not prevent it from happening because I felt that keeping the marketplace for ideas open was really important in this instance," he said. Previous hearings held by the panel have led to significant consequences for university presidents. In December 2023, Representative Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican, raised her own political profile by grilling the presidents of Harvard, University of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She asked them whether "calling for the genocide of Jews" would violate their schools' codes of conduct related to bullying and harassment. Each president declined to give a simple "yes" or "no" answer, noting that a wide range of hateful speech is protected under the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment and under university policies. Their testimony, which many viewed as insensitive and detached, triggered an outcry. More than 70 U.S. lawmakers later signed a letter demanding that the governing boards of the three universities remove the presidents. Soon afterwards, Harvard's Claudine Gay and Penn's Liz Magill resigned. Columbia President Minouche Shafik resigned in August, following her April testimony before the committee.
San Francisco Chronicle
21 hours ago
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
UC Berkeley chancellor faces House questions on campus antisemitism
UC Berkeley Chancellor Richard Lyons is expected to defend his university's handling of campus antisemitism Tuesday when he and the leaders of two other universities become the latest to be grilled on the subject by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. Joining Lyons in Washington will be Robert Groves, interim president of Georgetown University, and Felix Matos Rodriguez, chancellor of the City University of New York. Ahead of the hearing, committee chair Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Michigan, characterized antisemitism as 'festering at schools across the country.' Earlier this year, the Trump administration announced an investigation of UC Berkeley and other universities into whether an 'antisemitic hostile work environment' exists. It's unclear what the investigation turned up, if it happened at all. Congress and the U.S. Department of Justice had already opened investigations into antisemitism at the school in 2024. In December, a House report noted that UC Berkeley had 'issued no suspensions and placed only one student on probation' after student protests that year. The committee has held several such hearings with campus leaders since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas militants attacked Israel and triggered the ongoing war in Gaza. The conflict prompted college students across the country to demonstrate throughout 2024 for Palestinian rights and against Israel. Their tent encampments and entrenched protests rocked the usual campus equilibrium, as university leaders struggled to navigate students' right to protest while trying to guard against hate speech and occasional violence targeting Jews and Muslims alike. The committee's Republican majority has focused on antisemitism alone and typically has taken a harsh tone toward the academics, pushing for missteps during their testimony. At stake is much of the federal funding that helps power the universities, and even whether the leaders' responses to the questioning could topple them from their posts. The presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania resigned after the first such hearings in Dec. 2023 when their answers failed to deliver the sharp condemnations of antisemitism that committee members were looking for. Since then, the presidents of Columbia and the University of Virginia have also stepped down, as the Trump administration has withheld billions of dollars from Harvard and Columbia, demanded operational changes at the universities — including the hiring of more conservative employees — and threatened to halt hundreds of millions of dollars more to other universities. Committee member Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican known for her aggressive questioning of campus leaders, appeared to take glee in the resignations, remarking at one point: 'Three down, so many to go.' At the most recent hearing in May, as the committee reiterated threats to halt federal funding over the schools' allegedly tepid response to antisemitism, the presidents of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Haverford in Pennsylvania and DePaul in Chicago each apologized to the committee for not doing more to tamp it down. During the same hearing, David Cole, a former legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union who testified with the presidents, likened the antisemitism hearings to those of the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s aimed at routing out hidden Communists. Like those hearings, today's 'are not an attempt to find out what happened but an attempt to chill protected speech,' Cole said. UC Berkeley has been the site of notable incidents, including the violent shut-down in Feb. 2024 of a speech by an Israeli lawyer invited by Jewish students to speak at Zellerbach Playhouse. Protesters broke a window, called an attendee a 'dirty Jew' and grabbed another by her neck. For years, pro-Palestinian students have periodically set up mock Israeli checkpoints — used in Israel to prevent passage of Palestinians — at Sather Gate, a main campus entry, forcing students to detour if they did not want to pass through. After the Hamas invasion, such incidents prompted law Professor Steven Solomon to pen a widely read essay titled 'Don't Hire My Antisemitic Law Students,' and political science Professor Ron Hassner to stage a sit-in against campus antisemitism. Student Karin Yaniv is also suing her campus union, UAW Local 4811, which represents graduate student workers, accusing it of repeatedly excluding and mocking Jewish members who tried to participate in meetings. Union leaders deny the allegations. On Monday, as a counterweight to the perception of UC Berkeley as a pit of antisemitism, 82 Jewish faculty and senior staff submitted a letter to the hearing committee praising the way campus leaders — including Lyons, who took the helm a year ago, and his predecessor, Carol Christ — have handled the shifting landscape for Jewish students since Oct. 7, 2023. 'Teaching and research were not hindered, protests were confined, and the UC Berkeley administration made significant and impactful efforts to ensure that Jewish students, staff, and faculty were safe on campus and felt accepted and integral to the university community,' said the letter that commended leaders for negotiating a peaceful end to students' protest encampment and for supporting Jewish life on campus. 'We reject the claim that UC Berkeley is an antisemitic environment,' said the letter, which acknowledged that Jews on campus do face 'real challenges.' But the letter writers affirmed: 'We feel secure on campus and support the administration's efforts to balance safety with respect for free speech.' A fact sheet provided by the campus lists many of them, including regular meetings between senior leaders and the university's Jewish community, and public statements condemning antisemitism. Other efforts include: Financial support for the 'Antisemitism Education Initiative,' which helps campuses across the country tackle anti-Jewish discrimination. Mandatory antisemitism training during new student orientation and for resident assistants in campus housing. A new 'Berkeley Bridging Fellowship' Israel and Palestine dialogue group. Since the Zellerbach violence, the school has spent more than $10 million on additional security 'to ensure all events can safely proceed as planned.' UC Berkeley has not seen anti-Israel protests since about a year ago, when the University of California's systemwide President Michael Drake said that all campuses would enforce a policy banning tent encampments and masks intended to hide the identity of protesters. UC Berkeley officials have said they never arrested anyone in the Zellerbach incident because, even after studying footage, they could not identify any perpetrators. In New York, anti-Trump and pro-Palestinian protesters from City University of New York criticized their chancellor, Matos, for skipping a scheduled talk on economic mobility in that city to 'capitulate to the federal government' by testifying before Congress. Meanwhile, it's unclear how the committee selected Lyons and the other participants, who were not subpoenaed, but simply 'invited,' said a UC Berkeley spokesperson. Neither the university nor the committee would provide a copy of the invitation.
