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Three university presidents apologized for not acting more strongly to reduce anti -Semitism on their campus during the hearing of the House of Representatives on Wednesday, while the Republicans described it as an attempt to examine colleges outside the ivy.
“I am sorry that my actions and leadership are your betrayal,” said Windy Raymond, head of the Haraford College, Koker College outside Philadelphia, said she wants to know her. “I am committed to getting this correctly.”
The House of Representatives Committee for Education and Manpower has held a number of hearings with schools since October 7, 2023, a Hamas attack on Israel and the war in Gaza, which followed. In many ways, he echoed the first and most dramatic session, in December 2023, which led to the resignation of the Presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard.
During the session on Wednesday, the Republic threatened to block federal funding from unidentified schools. The democratic minority accused the Republicans of tolerance with anti -Semitism in their party while using it as a political weapon against others. University leaders tried to take an accurate line between showing remorse and not giving the committee, while not undermining academic freedom.
But it was also a completely different moment of higher education and its relationship to the federal government.
The session mostly looked at events a year ago, when universities throughout the country were reeling from protest camps and mass arrests. The war continues, but the protests have vanished largely, with some prominent exceptions.
One of the protests at the University of Washington drew widespread attention this week, but the university soon cleansed the demonstrators, to praise the government. In Colombia on Wednesday, dozens of pro -Palestinian demonstrators, who wore masks and caves, occupied the main Bater Library room.
Meanwhile, the Republican attack is intensified against universities only.
The Trump administration has opened investigations into dozens of universities for accusations of anti -Semitism, and stripped hundreds of millions of dollars from others saying that they have not done enough to respond to the issues raised by the protests, most of which are in the states that tend to Democrats. President Trump and his officials, especially schools, focused on the ivy association.
The Congress session was on Wednesday, entitled “Behind Evs”. “We are trying to highlight that this is a problem that affects schools throughout America, not just the ivy bond,” said the committee spokeswoman.
The session focused on the schools that obtained F -F. from the Anti -Defamation Association. This time, the three presidents, in Haraford, Dipol University in Chicago, and California Applied Arts University in Saint Louis Obspas knew the questions that could be expected and managed to a large extent of their ingenuity. (Cal Polly recently raised his degree to D.)
But after refusing to provide statistics on disciplinary issues against the demonstrators, the President of the Haraford, Dr. Raymond, came to interrogate them in particular from Congress Eliz Stefanick, a Republican in New York. Its harsh interrogation was largely responsible for the damage that helped push other university presidents to resign.
Mrs. Stefanick, Dr. Raymond, interrogated a student group that called for the dismantling of the State of Israel “by all the necessary means”, asking: “What does” all the necessary means “mean to you?”
Dr. Raymond replied, “Calling this type of terms is hateful because of what it can mean,” stressing the word “can”.
“Does this depend on the context?” Mrs. Stefanick was cut off.
Dr. Raymond was warned through the experiences of Harvard and Pens. Both of them gave answers not obligated to questions about whether they would lead students who called for the genocide of the Jews. Both said that doing this depends on the context.
Dr. Raymond escaped from the “context” question, saying that she will not talk about individual cases.
That Mrs. Stefanick threatened: “Many people sat in this position who did not return at the presidents of the universities for their failure to answer the explicit questions.”
In the year and a half since the December 2023 session, many university leaders appear to have been vigilant by students, faculty and legislators, and the fate of their peers.
Several schools have stressed the rules related to protests and the doors of the campus for the strangest and issued more severe penalties for the participants. The moves may help explain the reason for the spread of protests this spring. It also banned many universities or arrested the active groups supporting the Palestinian.
“As a university president and a human being, this is a matter that I take seriously,” said Jeffrey de Armstrong, President of Cal Polly, to the committee. “We have to do what is better.”
He got rid of plans such as ending a chair in Jewish studies and establishing a anti -Semitic work team to increase awareness of anti -Semitism.
On Wednesday, the Republicans followed what became a favorite book, and pushed schools to respond to their complaints by threatening to possess federal financing.
Ryan McKenzi, a Republican Pennsylvania, demanded that Dr. Raymond collect information about the punishment of students and professors in Haraford and submit it to the committee or risk the loss of federal financing.
“You receive federal money, right?” He said.
“We are doing, in a wonderful partnership with the federal government,” Dr. Raymond replied.
“Well, this partnership may be in danger,” said Mr. McKenzi.
When she turned her to question the presidents, actor Susan Bonamisi, a democratic in Oregon, rejected the session as a performance.
Ms. Bunamishi said that, as a Jewish Kenis, “I could no longer pretend that this is a good effort to clarify the anti -Semitism, especially when the Trump administration and the majority party undermine regularly Jewish values.”
David Cole, the former National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, witnessed alongside presidents. He compared the activities of the committee with communist fishing in the fifties. “They are not an attempt to find out what happened, but an attempt to cool protected speech,” he said.
Mr. Cole also said that the Trump administration may smile with the government’s ability to investigate discrimination complaints by cutting the employees of the Civil Rights Office of the Ministry of Education.
However, the Trump administration has promised more than 60 schools’ investigations into the complaints that the anti -Semitism allowed to communicate on their campus.
On Tuesday night, a working group said that President Trump has formed a review of the University of Washington, where the demonstrators were briefly occupied by an engineering building on Monday as chaos was revealed in the streets abroad.
According to the university, “Individuals who often covered their faces prevented reaching two streets outside the building, banning entrances and going out to the building and burning fires in two waste landfills on the street abroad.”
The University of Washington said about 30 people were arrested.
The work team praised the university’s response as “good first steps”, but warned that the university “should do more to deter future violence”, with more implementation procedures and policy changes.
The work group indicated that the flow of federal funds to the university may be in danger.
A university spokesman did not respond to a request to comment on the announcement of the work group. In the last fiscal year at the university, about 18 percent of its revenues came from grants and contracts, with most of those dollars from the federal government.
