Columbia U’s president says advocating genocide would violate school rules
Last December, Elise Stefanik, a congresswoman from New York and a Trump-aligned star in the Republican Party, had a standout political moment.
A line of questioning she posed to the presidents of two Ivy League universities during a congressional hearing drew widespread condemnation of the college leaders, who wouldn’t say whether calls for the genocide of Jewish people violated school policies. The presidents, Claudine Gay of Harvard and Liz Magill of the University of Pennsylvania, both stepped down from their posts in the aftermath.
Minouche Shafik, president of Columbia University in New York City, was invited to testify before the same panel of lawmakers but declined to appear at the December hearing because of her travel schedule.
As protests over the Israel-Hamas war have continued to roil Shafik’s Manhattan campus, congressional Republicans again asked her to testify on Capitol Hill. Her presence in Washington on Wednesday, alongside other university administrators, yielded yet another contentious scene that put campus discrimination under a political microscope.
She seemed to have learned from the mistakes of her Ivy League peers. When Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, an Oregon Democrat, asked whether calling for the genocide of Jewish people would violate Columbia’s rules, she said yes without hesitation.
“Columbia beats Harvard and UPenn,” said Rep. Aaron Bean, a Florida Republican. “Y’all have done something that they weren’t able to do. You’ve been able to condemn antisemitism without using the phrase ‘it depends on the context.’ ”
The hearing accentuated the bipartisan scrutiny facing college administrators in Washington, as Jewish and Muslim students across the country have reported fearing for their safety on campuses in recent months. Columbia, like many colleges and universities, is under investigation by the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights over allegations of discrimination.
But critics, including some congressional Democrats, said the hearing was less of a reflection of Republican concerns over the antisemitism students are facing, and more in keeping with a broader campaign of conservative attacks on higher education.
In a statement ahead of the hearing, Irene Mulvey, the president of the American Association of University Professors, said colleges and universities are currently witnessing a “new strain of McCarthyism.”
“Academic freedom, free speech, peaceful protest and associational rights for students and faculty must not be abridged in the name of fighting antisemitism,” she said. “We reject the false ‘choice’ between promoting a healthy and safe campus culture and promoting free inquiry.”
Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., criticized Republicans on the committee for failing to acknowledge concerns about the rise of Islamophobia on college campuses as well.