‘Astounding’ government failures, House GOP report on Jew-hatred says “It’s our intent to take this report, its recommendations, and act,” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson stated. Andrew Bernard
U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) released an investigative report from six congressional committees about Jew-hatred in the United States after Hamas’s terror attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
The Republican staff report, which is based on seven months of committee investigations, describes “astounding” failures on the part of federal government departments and agencies. The report, which was released on Thursday, states that universities across the country likely violated the civil rights of Jews in their handling of anti-Israel campus protests.
“It’s our intent to take this report, its recommendations, and act,” Johnson stated. “We’ll use what’s in here to continue protecting our Jewish brothers and sisters from discrimination and violence. But make no mistake, we will continue these efforts in the next Congress, and anytime antisemitism rears its ugly head, the House will shine a light on it and take action.”
The report’s conclusions focus largely on the failures of universities to respond to anti-Israel campus protests which began after Oct. 7 but that turned into a nationwide wave of tent encampments. That wave followed students occupying Columbia University’s South Lawn ahead of Minouche Shafik’s testimony before the House Education and Workforce Committee. (Shafik resigned as the Columbia president in August.)
Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), who chairs the House committee, stated on Thursday that the reputation of U.S. higher education institutions has been in “free fall” over their failure to address antisemitism on campus.
“Stopping that free fall comes down to one word: accountability,” Foxx said. “We need accountability because without it, we cannot guarantee that Jewish students have the safe learning environment they deserve.”
One of the problems highlighted in the report is that universities chose to treat the congressional investigations into Jew-hatred on campus as a public relations problem rather than as a potential violation of the civil rights of Jewish students.
That attitude led to administrators at the University of Pennsylvania “trying to orchestrate media coverage depicting members of Congress as ‘bullying and grandstanding’ and Columbia board of trustees leaders dismissing congressional oversight on campus antisemitism as ‘capital [sic] hill nonsense’ and expressing hope Democrats would win the House and spare them from further oversight,” per the report.
The report also accuses the Biden administration of failing to properly use executive power to protect Jewish students, although Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discriminating on the basis of race, color and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance.
“The Biden-Harris administration failed to hold universities accountable for Title
VI violations,” the report says. “The Department of Education has not imposed real consequences for noncompliant institutions, initiated proactive compliance reviews or directed investigations as called for by its own procedures, nor has it issued a promised rulemaking implementing President Trump’s December 2019 Executive Order on Combating Antisemitism.”
The Republican staffers make 11 recommendations for universities, the executive branch and Congress to consider in response to these alleged failures, including recognizing that “discrimination against ‘Zionists’ is an unacceptable antisemitic civil rights violation” and that “congress should pass legislation removing Title IV eligibility from any university that boycotts or divests from Israel.”
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