NEW YORK – Committee leaders across the House Republican Conference are prepared to conduct oversight and take significant financial actions against universities for failing to protect Jewish students, they said during a Tuesday afternoon news conference regarding campus antisemitism.
Chairs of the Oversight, Judiciary, Science and Space and Technology, Education and the Workforce, and Ways and Means committees each spoke about how they will hold university leadership accountable.
Rep. Virginia Foxx, chair of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, gave notice to Yale, UCLA, and the University of Michigan leadership to appear before the committee for a hearing on May 23.
Foxx said everyone affiliated with the universities will receive a “healthy dose of reality.”
“As Republican leaders, we have a clear message for mealy-mouthed, spineless college leaders: Congress will not tolerate your dereliction of duty to your Jewish students,” Foxx said. “American universities are officially put on notice that we have come to take our universities back.”
Foxx, along with House Speaker Mike Johnson and Republican colleague Rep. Mike D'Esposito, briefly met with Columbia University leadership last week before holding a news conference on campus calling for President Minouche Shafik’s resignation.
No stone must go unturned while buildings are being defaced, campus greens are being captured, and graduations are being ruined, Foxx stressed.
“College is not a park for play-acting juveniles or a bound ground for radical activists,” she added.
Rep. Frank Lucas (R-OK), chair of the Science, Space and Technology Committee, said that universities that cannot protect their students are not in compliance with their funding obligations for the National Science Foundation (NSF), which accounts for about 25% of all federal support to US colleges and universities for basic research.
As a part of the conditions for the NSF to receive taxpayer dollars, universities must comply with Title Six of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin, Lucas said.
“Schools like Columbia and UC Berkeley annually received more than $50 million each in NSF grants,” Lucas said. “It’s time we review whether universities that allow the harassment, assault, or intimidation of their Jewish students are in compliance with their federal obligations.”
Lucas noted that the committee will be looking to conduct oversight on this issue “very soon.”
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) is the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which she said oversees agencies that dole out “massive amounts” of taxpayer-funded research grants.
For example, Rodgers said the National Institutes of Health gave around $682 million to Columbia University, $409 million to Harvard, $508 million to the University of Southern California, and $73 million to George Washington University.
“We will be increasing our oversight of institutions that have received public funding and cracking down on those who are in violation of the Civil Rights Act,” Rodgers said.
Calling to revoke visas of international students engaged in 'radical activity'
Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), called for the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security to revoke the visas of any international students engaged in “radical activity” that threatens national security.
Colleges and universities enjoy generous benefits under the US tax code, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Jason Smith, said.
“They have a responsibility to the American taxpayer to ensure that they are fulfilling their educational requirements as tax-exempt organizations, as well as protecting students from intimidation, harassment, and violence,” Smith added.
Too many colleges and universities failed to hold up their end of their bargain and have allowed antisemitism to flourish on their campuses, he said.
Smith said the committee has been investigating the nexus between antisemitism, tax-exempt universities, and terror financing networks, and held a hearing on this in November.
“During that hearing, we heard vivid testimony from a Jewish student from Cornell about how she feared for her life amid the death threats being made to Jewish students on the campus, while the university leadership was telling folks they shouldn’t be worried,” Smith said.
Smith divulged that the committee called on university leaders to disclose any donations or funding received from foreign governments.
Also, the committee is reviewing more than 1,500 pages of documents from its investigation.
“We will not stop until we get answers, until Jewish students can feel safe and until these universities are held accountable,” Smith said.
House Oversight Committee Chair Rep. James Comer said he will follow the money trail, expose it to the American people, and seek to hold bad actors funding hate accountable.
According to Johnson, nearly every committee has a role to play “in these efforts to stop the madness that has ensued.”