Congress may cut federal funds flowing to colleges and universities that fail to combat antisemitism on campus, the chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce warned Sunday.
“We cannot tolerate taxpayer dollars going to institutions that allow for antisemitism and for calling for genocide of the Jews,” Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), who chairs the panel that launched an investigation into the higher education institutions last week, told Fox News.
The congresswoman stressed that lawmakers aren’t prejudging the situation, telling the outlet the panel “will take the investigation where it leads us.”
Foxx announced a probe into antisemitism on college campuses broadly Thursday, in the wake of the committee’s tense hearing featuring testimony from the presidents of Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania.
The three presidents were evasive when asked about condemning student chants including calls “intifada,” which House GOP Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY) noted is akin to pushing for “the genocide of Jews.”
Facing blowback over her response, UPenn President Liz Magill resigned Saturday.
“This is not just confined to these campuses. We want to look at Columbia, Cornell, and many, many other institutions,” Foxx stressed.
“It should be so easy. This country was founded on religious freedom,” she added. “It should not be difficult to condemn antisemitism and the calling for genocide of the Jews or any other people.”
Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act bars discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin in programs or activities receiving government money.
Instances of reported antisemitic activity on campuses skyrocketed following that bloody Oct. 7 surprise attack on Israel from Hamas.
Students, often espousing pro-Palestinian sentiments, have been caught trafficking in Hamas’ rhetoric against the Jews, including repeating phrases like “intifada” and “from the river to the sea.”
Prior to the congressional hearing last Tuesday, Republicans spotlighted the accounts of four Jewish students who emotionally recounted their harrowing experiences on campus.
“People are paying attention because we do have a moral rot,” Foxx said, adding that her panel has been looking to tackle post-secondary education reform broadly for a “long time.”
“I don’t call them elite institutions, I call them the most expensive institutions in the country,” she said. “They are not teaching morality they are not teaching higher order thinking.”
Still, “we don’t want to prejudge what we’re going to find in those investigations,” she added.
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