Over 70 members of Congress are calling for university presidents to be removed over their failure to condemn antisemitism.
Representatives Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) sent a letter to the board members of Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Pennsylvania demanding the university presidents be removed after failing to protect Jewish students.
“Jewish students should have found comfort on their campuses. Instead, many Jewish and Israeli students have faced an increasingly hostile educational environment, in the form of targeted harassment, protesters calling for the elimination of the Jewish state, and even acts of violence,” the members of Congress wrote. “According to a recent survey by ADL and Hillel International, 73% of Jewish college students surveyed have experienced or witnessed some form of antisemitism on campus since the beginning of the school year. This is unacceptable. Antisemitism has been allowed to fester on campuses for years, and in the wake of the October 7th attack, the world is witnessing the consequences.”
“This is a clear result of the failure of university leadership. To hold universities accountable, Congress held a hearing on confronting campus antisemitism. Testimony provided by presidents of your institutions showed a complete absence of moral clarity and illuminated the problematic double standards and dehumanization of the Jewish communities that your university presidents enabled,” the letter says.
“The university presidents’ responses to questions aimed at addressing the growing trend of antisemitism on college and university campuses were abhorrent. When pushed on whether calling for the genocide of Jews violates university policies on bullying or harassment, Presidents Gay (Harvard), Kornbluth (MIT), and Magill (Penn) were evasive and dismissive, failing to simply condemn such action. This should have been an easy and resounding ‘yes.'”
The members of Congress then stated that there “must be accountability” for those who violate “clear guidelines for college campuses.”
“If calls for genocide of the Jewish people are not in violation of your universities’ policies, then your universities are operating under a clear double standard.”
“The leadership of top universities plays a pivotal role in shaping the moral compass of our future leaders,” the letter added. “It is critically important that such leadership reflects a clear and unwavering commitment to combating antisemitism, along with all forms of hate speech and bigotry.”
“[W]e demand that your boards immediately remove each of these presidents from their positions and that you provide an actionable plan to ensure that Jewish and Israeli students, teachers, and faculty are safe on your campuses.”
The letter comes as a large donor for the University of Pennsylvania is withdrawing a donation of around $100 million in response to the college’s handling of antisemitism on campus.
Ross Stevens, founder and CEO of Stone Ridge Asset Management, donated to Penn in 2017 to help the university establish a financial innovation center.
Attorneys for Stevens sent the university a letter indicating the school violated Stone Ridge’s limited partnership agreement through its failure to adhere to anti-discrimination and anti-harassment rules.
The letter said that Stevens and Stone Ridge “are appalled by the University’s stance on antisemitism on campus.”
It claimed that Penn’s “permissive approach to hate speech calling for violence against Jews and laissez faire attitude toward harassment and discrimination against Jewish students would violate any policies of rules that prohibit harassment and discrimination based on religion, including those of Stone Ridge.”
