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Congressional Republicans renewed their calls Monday for college leaders to combat antisemitism and protect Jewish students on their campuses.
Oct. 7 marked one year since the Hamas attack on Israel that spurred the subsequent war in Gaza. More than 1,200 people were killed in the attack, and the ensuing war prompted protests in support of Palestinians on some college campuses.
Congressional Republicans have sharply criticized the way college leaders responded to those protests and reports of antisemitic incidents on campus. The House Education and Workforce Committee has held hearings on the issue and opened multiple investigations into colleges, requesting troves of documents related to student disciplinary records and foreign donations, among other topics.
Representative Virginia Foxx, the North Carolina Republican who chairs the House education committee, said in a statement Monday that her committee’s goal is to “ensure that Jewish students can sit in a classroom with the same sense of safety, dignity, and respect as any other student.”
Foxx added that college leaders bear “ultimate responsibility for allowing and enabling the cancer of antisemitism to spread unchecked.”
“While the damage done may never fully heal, the committee remains resolute in demanding accountability from feckless schools and their leadership,” she said.
Meanwhile, Dr. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican who serves on the Senate education committee, called on his colleagues to pass bills that would codify a definition of antisemitism into federal law and make it easier for students to file civil rights complaints with the federal government.
“Antisemitism on college campuses is not last year’s problem, it is happening now,” he wrote in The Daily Wire. “Jewish students and their families need real assurance that their schools and the Department of Education will protect them from discrimination and harm.”
