Representatives Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) demanded on Friday that the presidents of Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania be fired immediately for their handling of antisemitism on campus.
The two lawmakers sent a bipartisan letter — signed by 72 of their colleagues — to board members of the three institutions that boasted that university leaders are “enabling” the “dehumanization” of Jews and called for an “action plan” to be put in place. place on every campus to ensure the protection of Jewish and Israeli students and faculty.
“Jewish students should feel comfortable on their campus. 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 terrorism,” the letter said.
“This is a clear result of the failure of the university’s leadership,” the lawmaker argued.
New York Republican Representative Elise Stefanik blamed a “failure of university leadership” for the rise of antisemitic protests on college campuses. Getty Images The request, co-led by Florida Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz, came after three university presidents equated antisemitic threats with free speech. Getty Images
Claudine Gay, Liz McGill and Sally Kornbluth – the presidents of Harvard, UPenn and MIT, respectively – took heat on Capitol Hill earlier this week, after being grilled by House lawmakers over their response to campus protests calling for violent armed resistance against the state of Israel and the Israeli public, as well as the genocide of the Jews.
Gay and McGill dodged a question from Stefanik about whether the violent anti-Jewish demonstrations that have hit their institutions following the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel violated the code of conduct at the Ivy League school.
Gay emphasized that while he finds antisemitic speech “personally repugnant,” Harvard is committed to “free expression and giving[s] a spacious place to speak, even if the views are unpleasant.”
McGill said his institution will only consider calls for the genocide of Jews who bully or harass “If it is directed and severe, pervasive.”
Harvard President Claudine Gay and University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill came under fire after testifying before Congress on Tuesday. Getty Images Sally Kornbluth, president of MIT, testified that “we have heard chants that can be antisemitic depending on the context when calling for the extermination of the Jews.”
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“It’s a context-dependent decision,” the UPenn president added.
Kornbluth responded that such language violates the code of conduct only if it “targets an individual, not makes a general statement.”
“We have heard chants that can be antisemitic depending on the context when calling for the extermination of the Jews,” the MIT leader said.
Stefanik and Moskowitz were not satisfied with what they heard from the university president during their testimony.
“The university president’s response to a question intended to address the growing trend of antisemitism on college and university campuses is abhorrent,” they wrote in a letter Friday. “When pressed on whether calling for the genocide of the Jews violated the university’s policies on bullying or harassment, Presidents Gay (Harvard), Kornbluth (MIT), and Magill (Penn) were evasive and dismissive, failing to condemn such actions. This should be a simple and clear ‘yes’.
“Given this time of crisis, we demand that your board immediately remove each of these presidents from their positions and that you provide an actionable plan to keep Jewish and Israeli students, teachers and faculty safe on your campus.”
“Anything short of these steps will be seen as your endorsement of what Presidents Gay, Magill, and Kornbluth have told Congress and complicity in their antisemitic posturing. The world is watching – you can stand with your Jewish students and faculty, or you can choose the dangerous side of antisemitism,” the letter concluded.
Stefanik announced Thursday that a formal congressional investigation into the three universities would be launched.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
