Published: 15 May 2025
Last updated: 15 May 2025
A congressional hearing on college antisemitism last week highlighted disturbing reports of pro-terrorist professors, antisemitic attacks, and pro-intifada encampments on campuses across the United States.
The hearing addressed anti-Jewish environments well beyond the high-profile cases at elite colleges such as Harvard and Columbia. Previous hearings, focussed on Ivy League campuses, have led to the resignations of several college presidents in the past 18 months.
The hearing summoned the presidents of Haverford College, DePaul University and California Polytechnic State University, and a professor from Georgetown University Law Center.
Republican lawmakers grilled the witnesses on cases of Jewish students being abused on campus, university staff glorifying terrorism online, and repeated failures to uphold safety policies.
A number of Republicans argued that antisemitism on campus was the result of far-left, radical ideologies within the universities’ curriculum and culture. Several Democrats accused Republicans of exploiting the issue of antisemitism for political gain, while ignoring allegations of far-right antisemitism within their own party.
The responses from the witnesses ranged from deference to dodging to outright denial. Here are some of the key moments from the hearing.
Comments1
Wesley Parish15 May at 07:36 am
The Republican Party is unabashedly the Party of Klutzes! By arguing that dismantling Israel’s racist (anti-Palestinian) policies and behaviour, those students are calling for “genocide” , is to conflate thus confuse policies with people. But you won’t get them admitting to sexually harrassing policies, will you? You won’t have policies starting a #MeToo movement, will you? Frankly, such stupidity when I was in high school, had me declaring more than once, that I was ashamed to be human. And those racist policies of Israel are comparable to the racist policies of Australia during the “Black War” that wiped out the Tasmanian First Nations, and likewise decimated the First Nations in the rest of Australia. With water, food and medicine being cut off from Gaza at this current moment, those Republican congresscritters are in fact pro-genocide and proud of it.
And of course that’s not to mention the injuries suffered by some protesters in UCLA who were assaulted by pro-Israeli assailants. Nor does it mention that many Jewish students in those campus protests were happily celebrating Seder amongst non-Jews, who were equally happy to have the ceremony explained to them. There’s nothing that says “antisemite” quite as much as celebrating Seder, is there? /s These US congresscritters are pro-genocidal.