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University Presidents to Testify Before US Congress on Rampant Campus Antisemitism
A Jewish student at Harvard University harassed by anti-Israel protesters. Photo: Screenshot
The presidents of Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have been called to testify before the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce on Dec. 5 about rising antisemitism on college campuses in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel.
“Over the past several weeks, we’ve seen countless examples of antisemitic demonstrations on college campuses. Meanwhile, college administrators have largely stood by, allowing horrific rhetoric to fester and grow,” the committee’s chair, US Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), said in a statement.
“College and university presidents have a responsibility to foster and uphold a safe learning environment for their students and staff,” the congresswoman continued. “Now is not a time for indecision or milquetoast statements. By holding this hearing, we are shining a spotlight on these campus leaders and demanding they take the appropriate action to stand strong against antisemitism.”
The announcement of the hearing came days after a new poll, released last week by Hillel International, found that 37 percent of Jewish college students have felt the need to hide their Jewish identity on campus since the Hamas atrocities, in which some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were murdered and 240 others taken as hostages into Gaza. The survey also found that 35 percent of respondents said there have been acts of hate or violence against Jews on campus. A majority of those surveyed said they were unsatisfied with their university’s response to those incidents.
Kenneth Marcus — founder and chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, who recently appeared before the committee himself to discuss campus antisemitism — told The Algemeiner on Wednesday that the hearing stands to give the college presidents a “dose of reality.”
“My sense is that a lot of college leaders are working within echo chambers,” said Marcus, whose organization filed a lawsuit this week against the University of California, Berkeley alleging the school failed to respond to “unchecked” antisemitism. “They’re surrounded by ‘yes men,’ and they can lose touch with reality. The fact is that their handling of antisemitism on their campuses has been extraordinarily deficient. Considering the quality of their respective institutions, they should be embarrassed.”
Presidents Claudine Gay of Harvard, Liz Magill of Penn, and Sally Kornbluth of MIT have been beset this academic year by accusations that their administrations refused to rein in extreme anti-Zionist protesters, many of whom have uttered hate speech, disrupted class, and harassed and even intimidated and assaulted Jewish students.
The problem of campus antisemitism and anti-Israel hatred has worsened in the weeks since Oct. 7, but it began receiving considerable attention in September, when the University of Pennsylvania hosted the “Palestine Writes Literature Festival.” The event featured several speakers who have been accused of promoting antisemitic conspiracies and violence against Israel. The school refused to cancel the event or ask that it be hosted off-campus. Last month, Magill expressed regret and apologized for not promptly condemning the festival.
Harvard has come under fire for what Jewish and pro-Israel voices have described as allowing antisemitism and anti-Israel hatred to proliferate on campus since Oct. 7. After Hamas’ attack, the university waited days to condemn the Palestinian terrorist group’s mass slaughter and rape of civilians. The administration also declined to censure 31 student groups, led by the school’s Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC), who seemingly blamed Israel for the attack and accused the Jewish state of operating an “open air prison” in Gaza, despite the Israeli military having fully withdrawn from the territory in 2005.
Earlier this month, Gay condemned the popular anti-Israel phrase “from the river to the sea Palestine will be free” — a slogan widely interpreted as a call for the destruction of Israel, which is located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sen — and elaborated on plans to combat antisemitism on campus.
The school is currently being investigated by the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) to determine whether it failed to act after an Israeli student was encircled by a mob — which included Ibrahim Bharmal, editor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review — of pro-Palestinian students who screamed “Shame!” into his ears and tried to prevent him from escaping.
Jewish and Israeli students at MIT recently warned in a letter to Kornbluth that radical anti-Zionism and intimidation of Jewish students on campus had become intolerable and reminiscent of Nazi Germany on the eve of the Holocaust.
The letter, shared on X/Twitter by MIT professor Retsef Levi, recounted a recent incident in which students from the MIT Coalition Against Apartheid (CAA), a campus anti-Israel group, “physically prevented” them from attending class by forming a “blockade” of bodies in Lobby 7, a space inside the main entrance of the university. Non-students were invited to attend CAA’s demonstration, and together the entire group spent hours chanting “Intifada” — a term used to describe violent Palestinian uprisings against Israel — and declaring solidarity with Hamas.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post University Presidents to Testify Before US Congress on Rampant Campus Antisemitism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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New York City Jews Targeted for Most Hate Crimes in March, NYPD Stats Show
Orthodox Jewish man waiting for the train in the New York City subway. Photo: Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect.
Jews in New York City were victims of more hate crimes in March than any other group even as crime across the Five Boroughs fell to “historic” lows, according to statistics issued by the New York City Police Department (NYPD) on Thursday.
39 hate crimes targeted Jews last month, the Algemeiner reviewed data shows, outstripping the combined total of all other groups combined — 28 — and constituting 58 percent of all hate crimes reported to authorities. So far, there have born 85 antisemitic hate crimes in New York City through the first three months of 2025, with the month of February seeing a 100 percent increase in them over the previous year and March seeing no improvement at all.
The data continues a trend that has persisted for several years and concurred with a rise in antisemitic incidents across the US.
Jews represented a disproportionate share of hate crimes perpetrated in New York City in 2024 as well. Of the 641 total hate crimes tallied by the NYPD that year, Jews were victims of 345, which, in addition to being a 7 percent increase over the previous year, amounted to 54 percent of all hate crimes in the city.
As The Algemeiner has previously reported, antisemitic hate crimes have posed a major threat to the quality of life of New York City’s Orthodox Jewish community, which was the target in many of the incidents. In just eight days between the end of October and the beginning of November, three Hasidim, including children, were brutally assaulted in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. In one instance, an Orthodox man was accosted by two assailants, one masked, who “chased and beat him” after he refused to surrender his cellphone in compliance with what appeared to have been an attempted robbery.
In another incident, an African American male smacked a 13-year-old Jewish boy who was commuting to school on his bike in the heavily Jewish neighborhood. Less than a week earlier, an assailant slashed a visibly Jewish man in the face as he was walking in Brooklyn. Days after the week-long antisemitic hate crime spree, three men attempted to rob a Hasidic man after stalking him through the Crown Heights neighborhood.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post New York City Jews Targeted for Most Hate Crimes in March, NYPD Stats Show first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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NYC ‘Dyke March’ Bans Zionists From Participating in Annual Demonstration
(Source: Reuters)
NYC Dyke March, a public demonstration held by members of the lesbian community in New York City, has banned self-proclaimed “Zionists” from its annual event, citing a desire to stand against the so-called “genocide” occuring in Gaza.
The group revealed in a statement that their decision to ban Israel supporters from their ranks came after multiple members dropped out of the organization due to differences in “political beliefs and values.” After engaging in discussions with frustrated members, the NYC Dyke March committee agreed to adopt “an explicitly anti-Zionist position.” The organization claims that it will “strengthen our commitment” to fighting against Israel and advocating on behalf of Palestinians.
Last year, the NYC Dyke March previously came under scrutiny after organizers settled on “genocide” as the theme of its 2024 event. In a statement, decrying “ethnic cleansing, violence, and dehumanization,” the organization compared the ongoing war in Gaza, to the mass slaughters occurring in Ethiopia, Myanmar, and Sudan.
The organization plans on recycling the same theme for this year’s march, titling it “Dykes Against Genocide.” The group released a statement clarifying that Jews are allowed to attend and condemned the Oct. 7 slaughters as a “senseless loss of life.” After an apparent uproar from its members, the organization deleted the post and wrote that the group “unapologetically stands in support of Palestinian liberation.” In addition, the group affirmed that “anti-Zionism is not antisemitism and any language we put out which is not clearly opposed to a Zionist, imperialist agenda is harmful to us all.”
In the 17 months following the Hamas-led massacre of roughly 1200 people throughout Israel, the NYC Dyke March has produced numerous statements lambasting Israel and declaring “solidarity” with Palestinians amid their so-called “ongoing genocide.” The organization also accused Israel of engaging in supposed “pinkwashing” and “manipulative use of Jewish and queer identities,” with the aim of justifying its war efforts in Gaza.
Israel offers an expansive set of rights for members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transngender (LGBT) community, including recognition of same-sex marriages. Every year in June, Tel Aviv holds one of the largest LGBT Pride celebrations in the world. Meanwhile, members of the LGBT community are routinely imprisoned or murdered in other parts of the Middle East, including the Palestinian territories.
The NYC Dyke March’s announcement was met with widespread condemnation.
“You cannot exclude the majority of Jews and call yourself inclusive,” said the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in a post on X/Twitter, adding that the group “essentially equates Zionism with racism” in their announcement.
The post NYC ‘Dyke March’ Bans Zionists From Participating in Annual Demonstration first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Trump Administration Planning $510 Million Cut to Brown University Budget, Report Says
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with journalists onboard Air Force One en route to Miami, Florida, U.S., April 3, 2025. REUTERS/Kent Nishimura
The Trump administration reportedly plans to terminate $510 million worth of federal contracts and grants awarded to Brown University, according to media reports.
Brown University’s failure to mount a satisfactory response to the campus antisemitism crisis, as well as its embrace of the diversity, equity, and, inclusion (DEI) movement — perceived by many across the political spectrum as an assault on merit-based upward mobility and causing incidents of anti-White and anti-Asian discrimination — prompted the alleged pending action by the federal government, according to the right-leaning outlet The Daily Caller.
The announcement comes as Brown scrambles to cover a $46 million budget shortfall and other universities across the country have faced similar funding cuts.
Brown University officials, however, denied that the university had received any directives from the Trump Administration.
“We have no information to substantiate these rumors,” Brown University provost Francis Doyle issued a statement. “We are closely monitoring notifications related to grants, but have nothing more we can share as of now.”
Meanwhile, Brown’s Jewish community rushed to the university’s defense, issuing a joint statement with the Brown Corporation which said that the campus is “peaceful and supportive campus for its Jewish community.”
The letter, signed by members of the local Hillel International chapter and Chabad on College Hill, continued: “Brown University is a place where Jewish life not only exists but thrives. While there is more work to be done, Brown, through the dedicated efforts of its administration, leadership, and resilient spirit of its Jewish community, continues to uphold the principles of inclusion, tolerance, and intellectual freedom that have been central to its identity since 1764.”
Brown Divest Coalition — an anti-Zionist group which recently saw its campaign for the university to adopt the boycott, divest, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel defeated by the Brown Corporation — weighed in too, denouncing the reported cut as “a means of suppressing all forms of popular dissent to the renewed violence of the US war machine abroad.” US Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) also criticized the move, accusing the administration “of a broader pattern of behavior…that will negatively impact communities across the country and lead to layoffs, restrict research, and more.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the Trump administration is following through on its threats to inflict potentially catastrophic financial injuries on colleges and universities deemed as soft on antisemitism or excessively “woke.” The past six weeks has seen the policy imposed on elite universities including Harvard and Columbia, rattling a higher education establishment that has for better and worse operated for decades with little interference from the federal government even as it polarized the public and contributed to a growing sense that elites are contemptuous of Americans who live outside of their cultural enclaves.
In March, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon announced the cancellation of $400 million in federal contracts and grants for Columbia University, a measure that secured the school’s acceding to a slew of demands the administration put forth as preconditions for restoring the money. Later, the Trump administration disclosed its reviewing $9 billion worth of federal grants and contracts awarded to Harvard University, jeopardizing a substantial source of the school’s income over its alleged failure to quell antisemitic and pro-Hamas activity on campus following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel. Princeton University saw $210 million of its federal grants and funding suspended too, prompting its president, Christopher Eisgruber to say the institution is “committed to fighting antisemitism and all forms of discrimination.”
Additionally, 60 universities are being investigated by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights over their handling of campus antisemitism, a project that will serve as an early test of the administration’s ability to perform the essential functions of the agency after downsizing its workforce to increase its efficiency.
One of those universities, Northwestern University, on Monday touted its progress in addressing campus antisemitism, noting that it has adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, a reference tool which aids officials in determining what constitutes antisemitism, and begun holding “mandatory antisemitism training” sessions which “all students, faculty, and staff” must attend.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Trump Administration Planning $510 Million Cut to Brown University Budget, Report Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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