RSS
Facing Congress, Harvard, MIT, Penn presidents defend efforts to fight antisemitism on their campuses
(JTA) – In a high-profile congressional hearing, the presidents of three of the nation’s top universities acknowledged that Jewish and Israeli students have felt unsafe on campus since Oct. 7 and said their schools were taking action to fight antisemitism.
But at times the three leaders — from Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania — did not define what kinds of antisemitic and anti-Israel speech could be formally disciplined on campus.
When New York Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik asked directly if “calling for the genocide of Jews” is against the universities’ respective codes of conduct, all three presidents said the answer depended on the context.
“It is a context-dependent decision,” Penn President Liz Magill responded, leading Stefanik to reply, “Calling for the genocide of Jews is dependent on the context? That is not bullying or harassment? This is the easiest question to answer ‘yes,’ Ms. Magill.”
Responding to the same question, Harvard President Claudine Gay said, “When speech crosses into conduct, we take action.” MIT President Sally Kornbluth said that such language would only be “investigated as harassment if pervasive and severe.”
Yet the presidents roundly agreed that antisemitism was a serious problem on their campuses and had grown more severe since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the start of Israel’s war against the terror group in the Gaza Strip.
“I know some Israeli and Jewish students feel unsafe on campus,” Kornbluth said. “As they bear the horror of the Hamas attacks and the history of antisemitism, these students have been pained by chants in recent demonstrations.”
The presidents’ testimony came amid increased tensions on college campuses nationwide since Pro-Palestinian students or faculty — including at the three universities represented at the hearing — have made headlines for speech and actions on campus that a range of critics have called antisemitic or inappropriate.
Tuesday’s hearing — which lasted more than five hours and was called by the House education and workforce committee — was at least the fourth the Republican-led House has held on the subject of campus antisemitism since Oct. 7. But it was the first to summon university presidents to testify.
It came on the same day that the House endorsed a resolution initiated by the two Republicans in Congress that equates antisemitism and anti-Zionism.
Some Republicans sought to paint campus antisemitism as a product of universities embracing “the race-based ideology of the radical left,” as North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx, chair of the committee, said in her introductory remarks. Foxx said the presidents were there “to answer to and atone for the many specific instances of vitriolic, hate-filled antisemitism on your respective campuses,” and charged, “You have faculty and students that hate Jews, hate Israel.”
The university leaders all personally criticized anti-Israel activism. Magill condemned a recent pro-Palestinian-led attack on a Jewish-owned restaurant in Philadelphia that had begun with protests bordering her campus. “These protesters directly targeted a center city business that is Jewish- and Israeli-owned, a troubling and shameful act of antisemitism,” she said in her opening remarks.
But Magill would not say whether chants the protesters repeated — including one she referenced calling for “intifada” — rose to the level of incitement to violence that is punishable by the university’s code of conduct. During the Second Intifada two decades ago, Palestinian terror attacks killed an estimated 1,000 Israelis.
“The chanting, I think, calling for intifada, global revolution, [is] very disturbing,” Magill said during questioning. “I believe at minimum that is hateful speech that has been and should be condemned. Whether it rises to the level of incitement to violence under the policies that Penn and the city of Philadelphia follow, which are guided by the United States Constitution, I think is a much more difficult question. Incitement to violence is a very narrow category.”
A statue of a young Benjamin Franklin at the University of Pennsylvania. (Wikimedia)
She also demurred on how much advance action her administration was able to take against a controversial Palestinian literature festival held on campus earlier this fall, before Oct. 7, which has led the university to change its policies on guest speakers. Critics complained that speakers at the event, including former Pink Floyd member Roger Waters, had used language endorsing Israel’s destruction.
“I think canceling that conference would have been very inconsistent with academic freedom and free expression, despite the fact that the views of some of the people who came to that conference I find very, very objectionable because of their antisemitism,” she said.
Gay also did not say directly whether students chanting “intifada” on Harvard’s campus violated the university’s code of conduct.
“That type of hateful, reckless, offensive speech is personally abhorrent to me,” she said. But when asked whether Harvard would discipline it, she responded more generally, “When speech crosses into conduct that violates our policies, including policies against bullying, harassment or intimidation, we take action and we have robust disciplinary processes that allow us to hold individuals accountable.”
Schools have faced legal action and have lost out on donations from Jewish and pro-Israel advocates for their response to anti-Israel activism on campus, leading some to suspend pro-Palestinian student groups. None of the three universities represented on the panel have suspended such groups.
Jewish faculty at schools who have called for the deaths of Palestinians have also been disciplined, as have faculty members who celebrated Hamas’ attack.
Harvard in particular has come under scrutiny because Gay took days to issue a condemnation of Hamas after the Oct. 7 attacks, while a coalition of Harvard student groups immediately blamed Israel for them. She has since issued several condemnations, and said at the hearing that she would have responded sooner to the statement if she had realized it would be “wrongfully attributed to the university.”
Students walk by the Harvard Yard gate in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Sep. 16, 2021. (David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
Republican Rep. Julia Letlow, of Louisiana, pushed Gay to expel the students who had signed the letter, saying it helped encourage sexual violence toward women.
The school has since become a target of donor ire, with billionaire investor and Jewish Harvard alum Bill Ackman leading a charge to punish the university by withholding donations over its responses to the Israel crisis. (Through a spokesperson, Ackman has declined to comment to JTA about his strategy, but he has frequently gone after the school on X, formerly Twitter.)
Hundreds of Jewish Harvard alums are protesting the school by only giving $1, or by directing their giving to Harvard Hillel instead.
All three presidents have been in their current positions for less than two years. They all condemned the Hamas attacks, and all affirmed Israel’s right to exist; Magill and Gay, asked directly about the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement targeting Israel, also said their schools are institutionally opposed to it.
Kornbluth, the only Jewish university president to testify, was also the only one to affirm during questioning that antisemitism training is a part of her university’s diversity, equity and inclusion office. Magill said that Penn was “in the midst” of including antisemitism training in all its anti-bigotry efforts. DEI departments have come under increased scrutiny from the right, who have increasingly claimed that they fuel campus antisemitism.
Later in the hearing, Kornbluth also advocated for increased Holocaust education as an antidote to antisemitism.
In addition to questioning from members of Congress, Penn is today under federal investigation from the U.S. Department of Education, partially connected to its holding of the Palestinian literature festival. Harvard is also facing an investigation, in its case related to an Israeli student who was reportedly attacked at a campus pro-Palestinian protest following Oct. 7.
The Rogers Building at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., is shown on Aug. 12, 2017. (Beyond My Ken via Creative Commons)
At MIT, critics from both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian debate went after Kornbluth for partially suspending students who participated in a disruptive pro-Palestinian protest on campus. Supporters of the students alleged it was inappropriate for the school to take action against students for legally protected speech, while some conservative and pro-Israel groups said that Kornbluth hadn’t gone far enough.
Kornbluth’s disciplinary actions were not addressed at the hearing, though they were referenced at a Republican-led press conference held prior to the hearing. At that event, a handful of Jewish and Israeli students at MIT, Penn, Harvard and other campuses painted pictures of a university climate that was unable or unwilling to discipline antisemitism.
“The MIT administration, namely President Sally Kornbluth, has failed to address the crisis of rampant antisemitism on campus,” Jewish MIT graduate student Talia Khan, the daughter of a Jewish mother and Afghan Muslim father, said.
“What is the administration doing? We’ve brought them policy violations, proof that they happen, and the student handbook that were explicitly violated,” Jewish Harvard Law student Jonathan Frieden said. “When they respond, if at all, responses are empty and meaningless responses such as, ‘We are aware of the situation.’”
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson quoted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the press conference.
“I think Prime Minister Netanyahu probably said it the best: This truly is a battle between good versus evil, light versus darkness, civilization versus barbarism, and the idea that this is happening on college campuses, university campuses, across this land is unconscionable to us,” he said. “This antisemitism has become all too common. It’s turning to violence in some of these places. And the idea that university administrators would not speak out, would not take care of this problem, is just beyond comprehension.”
Some Democrats on the committee also criticized the presidents for what they said was an unacceptable approach to Israel-related issues on campus. Rep. Kathy Manning, a North Carolina Democrat and former chair of the Jewish Federations of North America, grilled Gay on Harvard’s Middle East Studies courses, which she claimed included “false accusations that Israel is a racist, settler colonialist, apartheid state.”
Manning pushed Gay to say she is “absolutely committed” to ensuring that Harvard’s Middle East Studies department features a variety of perspectives on Israel.
Also testifying was Pamela Nadell, a professor of American Jewish history at American University and the Democrats’ chosen witness for the hearing.
“It is fashionable among too many members of your campus communities to hate Jews,” Foxx said to the administrators in her closing remarks. “We’ll now be watching, and I genuinely hope, for the sake of our nation, you will rise to meet the challenge.”
Ron Kampeas contributed to this report.
—
The post Facing Congress, Harvard, MIT, Penn presidents defend efforts to fight antisemitism on their campuses appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
RSS
Trump Proposes Resettlement of Gazans as Netanyahu Visits White House
US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meet at the White House in Washington, DC, US, Feb. 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday proposed the resettlement of Palestinians from Gaza to neighboring countries, calling the enclave a “demolition site” and saying residents have “no alternative” as he held critical talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House.
“[The Palestinians] have no alternative right now” but to leave Gaza, Trump told reporters before Netanyahu arrived. “I mean, they’re there because they have no alternative. What do they have? It is a big pile of rubble right now.”
Trump repeated his call for Egypt, Jordan, and other Arab states in the region to take in Palestinians from Gaza after nearly 16 months of war there between Israel and the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, which ruled the enclave before the war and remains the dominant faction.
Arab leaders have adamantly rejected Trump’s proposal. However, Trump argued on Tuesday that Palestinians would benefit from leaving Gaza and expressed astonishment at the notion that they would want to remain.
“Look, the Gaza thing has not worked. It’s never worked. And I feel very differently about Gaza than a lot of people. I think they should get a good, fresh, beautiful piece of land. We’ll get some people to put up the money to build it and make it nice and make it habitable and enjoyable,” Trump said.
Referring to Gaza as a “pure demolition site,” the president said he doesn’t “know how they [Palestinians] could want to stay” when asked about the reaction of Palestinian and Arab leaders to his proposal.
“If we could find the right piece of land, or numerous pieces of land, and build them some really nice places, there’s plenty of money in the area, that’s for sure,” Trump continued. “I think that would be a lot better than going back to Gaza, which has had decades and decades of death.”
However, Trump clarified that he does “not necessarily” support Israel permanently annexing and resettling Gaza.
Trump later made similar remarks with Netanyahu at his side in the Oval Office, suggesting that Palestinians should leave Gaza for good “in nice homes and where they can be happy and not be shot, not be killed.”
“They are not going to want to go back to Gaza,” he said.
Trump did not offer any specifics about how a resettlement process could be implemented.
The post-war future of Palestinians in Gaza has loomed as a major point of contention within both the United States and Israel. The former Biden administration emphatically rejected the notion of relocating Gaza civilians, demanding a humanitarian aid “surge” into the beleaguered enclave.
Trump has previously hinted at support for relocating Gaza civilians. Last month, the president said he would like to “just clean out” Gaza and resettle residents in Jordan or Egypt.
Steve Witkoff, the US special envoy to the Middle East, defended Trump’s comments in a Tuesday press conference, arguing that Gaza will remain uninhabitable for the foreseeable future.
“When the president talks about ‘cleaning it out,’ he talks about making it habitable,” Witkoff said. “It is unfair to have explained to Palestinians that they might be back in five years. That’s just preposterous.
Trump’s comments were immediately met with backlash, with some observers accusing him of supporting an ethnic cleansing plan. However, proponents of the proposal argue that it could offer Palestinians a better future and would mitigate the threat posed by Hamas.
Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists started the Gaza war on Oct. 7, 2023, when they invaded southern Israel, murdered 1,200 people, and kidnapped 251 hostages back to Gaza while perpetrating widespread sexual violence in what was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.
Israel responded with a military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in neighboring Gaza.
Last month, both sides reached a Gaza ceasefire and hostage-release deal brokered by the US, Egypt, and Qatar.
Under phase one of the agreement, Hamas will, over six weeks, free a total of 33 Israeli hostages, eight of whom are deceased, and in exchange, Israel will release over 1,900 Palestinian prisoners, many of whom are serving multiple life sentences for terrorist activity. Meanwhile, fighting in Gaza will stop as negotiators work on agreeing to a second phase of the agreement, which is expected to include Hamas releasing all remaining hostages held in Gaza and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from the enclave.
The ceasefire and the future of Gaza were expected to be key topics of conversation between Trump and Netanyahu, along with the possibility of Israel and Saudi Arabia normalizing relations and Iran’s nuclear program.
Riyadh has indicated that any normalization agreement with Israel would need to include an end to the Gaza war and the pathway to the formation of a Palestinian state.
However, perhaps the most strategically important subject will be Iran, particularly how to contain its nuclear program and combat its support for terrorist proxies across the Middle East. In recent weeks, many analysts have raised questions over whether Trump would support an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, which both Washington and Jerusalem fear are meant to ultimately develop nuclear weapons.
Netanyahu on Tuesday was the first foreign leader to visit the White House since Trump’s inauguration last month.
The post Trump Proposes Resettlement of Gazans as Netanyahu Visits White House first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Trump Reimposes ‘Maximum Pressure’ on Iran, Aims to Drive Oil Exports to Zero
US President Donald Trump speaks at the White House, in Washington, DC, Feb. 3, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday restored his “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran that includes efforts to drive its oil exports down to zero in order to stop Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Ahead of his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump signed the presidential memorandum reimposing Washington’s tough policy on Iran that was practiced throughout his first term.
As he signed the memo, Trump described it as very tough and said he was torn on whether to make the move. He said he was open to a deal with Iran and expressed a willingness to talk to the Iranian leader.
“With me, it’s very simple: Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said. Asked how close Tehran is to a weapon, Trump said: “They’re too close.”
Iran‘s mission to the United Nations in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump has accused former President Joe Biden of failing to rigorously enforce oil-export sanctions, which Trump says emboldened Tehran by allowing it to sell oil to fund a nuclear weapons program and armed militias in the Middle East.
Iran is “dramatically” accelerating enrichment of uranium to up to 60 percent purity, close to the roughly 90 percent weapons-grade level, the UN nuclear watchdog chief told Reuters in December. Iran has denied wanting to develop a nuclear weapon.
Trump‘s memo, among other things, orders the US Treasury secretary to impose “maximum economic pressure” on Iran, including sanctions and enforcement mechanisms on those violating existing sanctions.
It also directs the Treasury and State Department to implement a campaign aimed at “driving Iran‘s oil exports to zero.” US oil prices pared losses on Tuesday on the news that Trump planned to sign the memo, which offset some weakness from the tariff drama between Washington and Beijing.
Tehran’s oil exports brought in $53 billion in 2023 and $54 billion a year earlier, according to US Energy Information Administration estimates. Output during 2024 was running at its highest level since 2018, based on OPEC data.
Trump had driven Iran‘s oil exports to near-zero during part of his first term after re-imposing sanctions. They rose under Biden’s tenure as Iran succeeded in evading sanctions.
The Paris-based International Energy Agency believes Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and other OPEC members have spare capacity to make up for any lost exports from Iran, also an OPEC member.
PUSH FOR SANCTIONS SNAPBACK
China does not recognize US sanctions and Chinese firms buy the most Iranian oil. China and Iran have also built a trading system that uses mostly Chinese yuan and a network of middlemen, avoiding the dollar and exposure to US regulators.
Kevin Book, an analyst at ClearView Energy, said the Trump administration could enforce the 2024 Stop Harboring Iranian Petroleum (SHIP) law to curtail some Iranian barrels.
SHIP, which the Biden administration did not enforce strictly, allows measures on foreign ports and refineries that process petroleum exported from Iran in violation of sanctions. Book said a move last month by the Shandong Port Group to ban US-sanctioned tankers from calling into its ports in the eastern Chinese province signals the impact SHIP could have.
Trump also directed his UN ambassador to work with allies to “complete the snapback of international sanctions and restrictions on Iran,” under a 2015 deal between Iran and key world powers that lifted sanctions on Tehran in return for restrictions on its nuclear program.
The US quit the agreement in 2018, during Trump‘s first term, and Iran began moving away from its nuclear-related commitments under the deal. The Trump administration had also tried to trigger a snapback of sanctions under the deal in 2020, but the move was dismissed by the UN Security Council.
Britain, France, and Germany told the United Nations Security Council in December that they are ready — if necessary — to trigger a snapback of all international sanctions on Iran to prevent the country from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
They will lose the ability to take such action on Oct. 18 when a 2015 UN resolution expires. The resolution enshrines Iran‘s deal with Britain, Germany, France, the United States, Russia, and China that lifted sanctions on Tehran in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear program.
Iran‘s UN ambassador, Amir Saeid Iravani, has said that invoking the “snap-back” of sanctions on Tehran would be “unlawful and counterproductive.”
European and Iranian diplomats met in November and January to discuss if they could work to defuse regional tensions, including over Tehran’s nuclear program, before Trump returned.
The post Trump Reimposes ‘Maximum Pressure’ on Iran, Aims to Drive Oil Exports to Zero first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Trump Stops US Involvement With UN Rights Body, Extends UNRWA Funding Halt
An UNRWA aid truck at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. Photo: Reuters/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday ordered an end to US engagement with the United Nations Human Rights Council and continued a halt to funding for the UN Palestinian relief agency UNRWA.
The move coincides with a visit to Washington by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has long been critical of UNRWA, accusing it of anti-Israel incitement and its staff of being “involved in terrorist activities against Israel.”
During Trump‘s first term in office, from 2017-2021, he also cut off funding for UNRWA, questioning its value, saying that Palestinians needed to agree to renew peace talks with Israel, and calling for unspecified reforms.
The first Trump administration also quit the 47-member Human Rights Council halfway through a three-year term over what it called chronic bias against Israel and a lack of reform. The US is not currently a member of the Geneva-based body. Under former President Joe Biden, the US served a 2022-2024 term.
A council working group is due to review the US human rights record later this year, a process all countries undergo every few years. While the council has no legally binding power, its debates carry political weight and criticism can raise global pressure on governments to change course.
Since taking office for a second term on Jan. 20, Trump has ordered that the US withdraw from the World Health Organization and from the Paris climate agreement — also steps he took during his first term in office.
The US was UNRWA’s biggest donor — providing $300 million-$400 million a year — but Biden paused funding in January 2024 after Israel accused about a dozen UNRWA staff of taking part in the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Palestinian terrorist group Hamas that triggered the war in Gaza.
The US Congress then formally suspended contributions to UNRWA until at least March 2025.
The United Nations has said that nine UNRWA staff may have been involved in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack and were fired. A Hamas commander in Lebanon — killed in September by Israel — was also found to have had a UNRWA job.
An Israeli ban went into effect on Jan. 30 that prohibits UNRWA from operating on its territory or communicating with Israeli authorities. UNRWA has said operations in Gaza and West Bank will also suffer.
The post Trump Stops US Involvement With UN Rights Body, Extends UNRWA Funding Halt first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login