The U.S. Congress will use its oversight of federal funds allocated to schools to ensure that Jews are safe on college and university campuses, the chairs of six House committees wrote to 10 colleges and universities.
“Failing to act decisively to ensure a safe learning environment for all students would be a grave dereliction of your responsibilities,” the committee chairs wrote. “This Congress will not stand idly by and allow an environment hostile to Jewish students to persist.”
The chairs sent letters on Monday to Barnard College, Columbia University, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northwestern University, University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers University, Cornell University and University of California, Berkeley and University of California, Los Angeles.
The House committee chair signatories were Reps. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), of the House Education and the Workforce Committee; Jason Smith (R-Mo.), of the Ways and Means Committee; Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), of the Energy and Commerce Committee; Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), of the Judiciary Committee; James Comer (R-Ky.), of the Oversight and Accountability Committee; Frank Lucas (R-Okla.), of the Science, Space and Technology Committee.
“Postsecondary education is a unique opportunity for students to learn and have their ideas and beliefs challenged,” the committee chairs wrote. “However, universities receiving hundreds of millions of federal funds annually have denied students that opportunity and have been hijacked to become venues for the promotion of terrorism, antisemitic harassment and intimidation, unlawful encampments, and in some cases, assaults and riots.”
“The House of Representatives will not countenance the use of federal funds to indoctrinate students into hateful, antisemitic, anti-American supporters of terrorism,” they added.