Three top American University presidents balked during a congressional hearing on Tuesday when questioned several times if students calling for the “genocide of Jews” warrants a violation of their respective campus’ codes of conduct.
Harvard University President Claudine Gay, MIT University President Sally Kornbluth, and University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth Magill testified during a Committee on Education & the Workforce hearing on “Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism.”
The university officials spoke about the rise of anti-Semitism on their campuses as Israel enters its third month of war with Hamas after the terrorist militant group launched a brutal invasion against the Jewish state on October 7.
New York Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik asked each president a number of times to answer “yes or no” if calling for the genocide of Jews violated the schools’ code of conduct or rules regarding bullying and harassment.
However, the university officials asserted it all depends on context, noting that the schools would take action if the speech became “conduct.”
During the exchange, Magill told Stefanik, “If the speech turns into conduct it can be harassment.”
Stefanik shot back: “‘Conduct’ meaning committing the act of genocide? The speech is not harassment? This is unacceptable.”
The congresswoman then pressed Gay to answer if calling for the genocide of Jews is in violation of Harvard’s rules on bullying and harassment.
“It can be, depending on the context,” Gay answered.
“What’s the context?” Stefanik asked.
“Targeted as an individual; targeted at an individual,” the president said.
“It’s targeted at Jewish students. Jewish individuals. Do you understand your testimony is dehumanizing them?” Stefanik asked her. “Do you understand that dehumanization is part of anti-Semitism?”
WATCH:
🚨🚨🚨Presidents of @Harvard @MIT and @Penn REFUSE to say whether “calling for the genocide of Jews” is bullying and harassment according to their codes of conduct. Even going so far to say it needs to turn to “action” first. As in committing genocide.
THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE AND… pic.twitter.com/hUY3SgoOOi
— Rep. Elise Stefanik (@RepStefanik) December 5, 2023
As the war overseas continues, the conflict has only further divided Americans on U.S. soil, including college students nationwide who have gathered in protest to chant “intifada” — or the “genocide of Jews” — on campus.
Roughly 3 out of every 4 Jewish college students report they have either experienced anti-Semitism or seen others victimized by it on their campus since the conflict in Israel erupted earlier this year. According to a study conducted by the Anti-Defamation League and Hillel International, nearly 73% of Jewish students — a rise from 63% in 2021 — say they have been victimized or witnessed another student experience anti-Semitism.
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Jewish students who felt safe on their campus dropped from 67% before the Hamas terror attack to 46% afterward.
Harvard student Jonathan Frieden told Fox News he walks by crowds of people chanting “from the river to the sea” every week on his way to class.
“I talk to my Jewish friends on campus every day,” he said. “They tell me how afraid they are to go to class.”
Charlie Covit, a student activist for the Israel on Campus Coalition, said in a statement to Fox News Digital that while Gay’s “willingness to call chants of ‘Intifada’ and other hateful antisemitic speech ‘abhorrent’ is reassuring … the next step is action.”
“When students are saying ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be Arab’ and clearly calling for violence against Jewish communities — and even interrupting classes to do so — we need to hear Harvard clearly state how it will discipline those who are voicing these hateful views,” Covit said.
Stefanik, a Harvard University alumnus, accused her alma mater of enabling “far-left” anti-Semitism in an op-ed in the Harvard Crimson, the school’s student newspaper.
“Today, Harvard University has been so corrupted by its apparent desperation to appease the far-left that its moral compass has been long forgotten,” she wrote. “It is profoundly disappointing to see Harvard University, a prestigious institution which we care so deeply about, devolve from fostering an age of American independence into an institution that enables abhorrent antisemitism.”
She drew attention to Gay’s response to dozens of student organizations at the school signing on to a statement alleging Israel was “entirely responsible for all unfolding violence” after the Hamas terrorist attacks.
“While this statement is sickening and multiple groups have since retracted their signatures, what is worse is the failure of Harvard’s leadership to immediately condemn the statement,” Stefanik wrote. “Harvard’s silence created a vacuum in which heinous antisemitism echoes loudly.”