Four Takeaways From the Latest Antisemitism Hearing

Two of three college presidents emerged largely unscathed from a three-plus-hour congressional hearing Wednesday that framed antisemitism as a rampant problem on campuses across the U.S.

The hearing, conducted by the Republican-led Committee on Education and the Workforce, featured the presidents of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo; DePaul University; and Haverford College—all of which the GOP has accused of failing to crack down on instances of antisemitism. While the presidents of Cal Poly and DePaul offered answers that Republican committee members seemed to find acceptable, Haverford president Wendy Raymond often found herself in the crosshairs of interrogators who said they found her remarks “evasive.”

A fourth witness, David Cole, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and the only non–college president to face questioning, pressed Congress on its efforts to police antisemitism. Cole accused Republicans of acting in ways reminiscent of McCarthyism by calling hearings that he argued were more focused on berating campus leaders than on getting to the bottom of the antisemitism issue.

Wednesday’s hearing also featured pushback from Democrats on the committee, who accused their Republican counterparts of standing idly by while the Trump administration dismantles the Office for Civil Rights. Democratic representatives argued that if Republicans were truly committed to battling antisemitism, they would speak out against eliminating OCR offices that investigate civil rights concerns.

Here are four takeaways from Wednesday’s congressional hearing, which proceeded under the title “Beyond the Ivy League: Stopping the Spread of Antisemitism on American Campuses.”

1. Raymond Feels the Wrath

With just over 1,400 students, Haverford was the smallest of the institutions whose leaders were called before Congress Wednesday. But its president, who has led the college since 2019 and was the only woman to testify, fielded most of the questions and seemed to bear the brunt of congressional criticism.

Raymond—whom Wisconsin Republican Glenn Grothman referred to once as “Miss Haverford”—incurred the wrath of Congress for her refusal to speak about discipline for students or employees whom the representatives accused of making antisemitic statements or engaging in discriminatory actions.

Raymond was also frequently interrupted when she began to answer questions.

While Haverford did not have a pro-Palestinian encampment, like other colleges brought in for such hearings, Congress focused on a number of alleged instances of antisemitism, including the disruption of a workshop on antisemitism last fall and calls to boycott a Jewish bakery.

“Apparently, doughnuts were going to be ordered for commencement from a Jewish bakery. A group of antisemites on campus asked for a boycott, saying, ‘Say “no” to blood doughnuts.’ Did you abide by their calls for a boycott?” Kevin Kiley, a California Republican, asked Raymond.

“We purchased and enjoyed the doughnuts,” Raymond responded.

Kiley then asked four follow-up questions about whether students were served the doughnuts. Raymond affirmed the doughnuts were served to students at commencement last spring.

Ryan Mackenzie, a Republican from Pennsylvania, piled on the attacks on Raymond. He argued that “two of the university presidents have been very transparent with the aggregate information that they were willing to share about the punishments that were handed out on their university campus.” But Raymond, he declared, had been “evasive” in refusing to divulge any details about discipline.

He then asked Raymond if she would commit to reporting such information after the hearing.

“I appreciate your requesting that, and I can commit to our practices around this. We do not share our results of our disciplinary processes on our campus or publicly,” Raymond responded.

In response, Mackenzie threatened to cut off federal funding for Haverford.

“That partnership [with the federal government] may be in jeopardy, because if you will not provide transparency and accountability like your other colleagues here, it calls into question your actions on your campus,” Mackenzie said.

2. Genocide Question Falls Flat

In the first campus antisemitism hearing, in December 2023, the presidents of Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania fumbled when asked whether, hypothetically, calls for the genocide of Jewish students violated their policies. All three offered legalistic answers about such remarks depending on context.

The presidents of Harvard and Penn were soon out of their jobs.

Since then, presidents called before Congress have developed clear responses to that question. This week’s hearing was no different.

Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican who asked the question in the first hearing—and then publicly celebrated when two of the three presidents were forced to step down down—repeated it Wednesday.

“Is calling for the genocide of Jews protected speech on your campus?” Stefanik asked.

“No, of course not,” Raymond responded.

Stefanik used the remainder of her time to ask Raymond about disciplinary actions.

Mark Messmer, an Indiana Republican, asked a similar question later in the hearing. The presidents of Cal Poly and DePaul noted that a hypothetical call for the genocide of Jews would violate their policies and such action would be met with discipline, which could mean expulsion.

3. Congress Gets Called Out

In the three prior presidential hearings on campus antisemitism, witnesses were largely deferential to Congress, keen to avoid attracting additional scrutiny. But Cole, the Georgetown Law professor and a former legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union, compared recent hearings on antisemitism to the House Un-American Activities Committee, created in the late 1930s to investigate U.S. citizens’ alleged ties to communism.

Cole noted that hate speech is protected speech.

“The line between protected speech that is antisemitic and discrimination that is antisemitic is a hard line to draw, but it’s a line that our Constitution compels us to draw,” Cole said.

He added, “It’s not a line that I’ve heard a single Republican care about on this committee.”

To draw that line, Congress needed to engage in a fact-finding mission and “determine what actually happened based on often-competing accounts, and then you make a determination based upon those facts,” he said. Instead, the committee has seized upon various complaints, which they have not investigated, and then brought in college presidents to “berate them based on the committee’s version of the facts, which may or may not be true,” Cole said.

He also argued that dismantling the Office for Civil Rights, as the Trump administration is in the process of doing, undermines the Department of Education’s ability to police violations of federal civil rights law.

Cole’s criticism prompted pushback from Congress, particularly Kiley, who argued there was no relation between the antisemitism hearings and those held by the House Un-American Activities Committee. As Kiley took aim at Cole for his remarks, his time for questioning expired. When Mark DeSaulnier, a Democrat from California, yielded time to Cole to answer, Kiley abruptly left the chamber before he could do so.

“I guess he didn’t want to hear the answer,” said committee chair Tim Walberg, a Michigan Republican.

4. Democrats Attack Trump

The four witnesses heard far fewer questions from Democrats than Republicans. Some Democrats spent the bulk of their time criticizing their GOP colleagues, accusing them of weaponizing antisemitism to go after higher education—which they argued was a bad-faith effort. Others used questions to tee up responses from Cole on damaging cuts to OCR.

Summer Lee, a Pennsylvania Democrat, offered one of the more fiery statements on Wednesday, arguing that efforts to suppress student protests are an “erosion of civil liberties.” She accused her Republican colleagues of performatively caring about antisemitism but ignoring “the Nazi salute” from Elon Musk, a reference to a repeated gesture from the billionaire bureaucrat whom President Donald Trump tasked with slashing government agencies.

“We have to fight back against attempts to erode our civil liberties,” Lee said.

Multiple Democrats also cited concerns about closing seven of OCR’s 12 regional offices, a move they argued has undermined the agency’s ability to respond to antisemitism and other concerns.

“According to public reports, nearly half of the OCR staff has been laid off, and so one is left to wonder, how can OCR carry out its important responsibilities with half the staff?” Rep. Bobby Scott, a Virginia Democrat and ranking member of the committee, said at the hearing.

He added that the Trump administration has stripped colleges of federal funding over alleged instances of antisemitism, and that international students have had their visas revoked and have been “disappeared into detention centers” without necessary fact-finding investigations.

“Moreover, instead of conducting investigations, according with the law, the Trump administration has taken a sledgehammer to due process rights of institutions,” Scott said.