Chairwoman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) on Tuesday called on the heads of Yale University, the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA), and the University of Michigan to testify before her panel in May as part of a new House-wide investigation into antisemitism in the U.S.
At the press conference, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) announced a chamber-wide effort to combat antisemitism, with the chairs of multiple committees in attendance to detail how they will contribute to the investigation.
Foxx’s Education Committee has already hosted multiple hearing on campus antisemitism, with the North Carolina congresswoman tearing into university heads over their actions since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
“Republican leaders have a clear message for mealy-mouthed spineless college leaders. Congress will not tolerate your dereliction of duty to your Jewish students. American universities are officially put on notice that we have come to take our universities back,” she said Tuesday.
“Everyone affiliated with these universities will receive a healthy dose of reality. Actions have consequences. One of those consequences is that I’ve given notice to appear to Yale, UCLA and Michigan to appear before the Education and Workforce Committee on May 23 for a hearing on their handling of the these most recent outrages,” she added.
The House-wide effort and the new hearing come as Columbia University protesters have taken over a building on campus and barricaded themselves inside until school administrators meet demands to divest from Israel.
Numerous chairs of major House committees were at the press conference to highlight how they would investigate antisemitism.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) said Republican leadership is asking the committees to investigate “the billions of federal taxpayer dollars that go to these universities” and threatened to take away funding if the schools don’t get control of the campuses.
Johnson lamented that universities are not inviting police into their campuses to take care of the protesters, saying that is one of the policy changes Republicans are looking to see.
“Those are the policy changes that we’re demanding and if they don’t correct this quickly, you will see Congress respond in kind. You’re gonna see funding sources begin to dry up. You’re gonna see every level of accountability that we can muster and that’s what the work of these committees and these fine chairpersons are going to be involved in, and we’ll say stay tuned and you’ll see much more,” Johnson said.
The education committee has held multiple hearings on college antisemitism, interrogating the president of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Columbia.
The first hearing with Harvard, UPenn and MIT made international headlines and has become the most watched House hearing ever after the presidents said it would depend on the context if calls for the genocide of Jewish students would be harassment.