The leaders of the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of Michigan, and Yale University will head to Capitol Hill on May 23 to participate in a hearing before the House Education and Workforce Committee, titled “Calling for Accountability: Stopping Antisemitic College Chaos.” The Grand Inquisitor, as in the previous two hearings, one of which cut short the careers of at least two university presidents, will be Committee Chairwoman Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC).
The hearing arrives amidst a wave of student disruptions, with students at these institutions and nationwide erecting encampments on their campuses, occupying buildings, and rallying in protest against Israel’s existential war against the terror group Hamas.
True to her reputation as university president eater, Chairwoman Foxx announced the next hearing, saying, “College is not a park for playacting juveniles or a battleground for radical activists. Everyone affiliated with these universities will receive a healthy dose of reality: Actions have consequences.”
The two past hearings saw Foxx devour presidents who were relatively new to their jobs. However, this time, two university leaders are seasoned veterans who are set to retire at the end of the academic year: UCLA chancellor Gene Block, who has led for 17 years, and Yale president Peter Salovey, with an 11-year tenure. Michigan president Santa Ono, although a newcomer to his current institution since October 2022, previously led two other universities before assuming his position in Ann Arbor.
The upcoming third set of hearings carries weight not only for the institutions and their leaders under scrutiny by the committee and its uncompromising chairwoman but also for higher education across the US, especially as Republicans intensify their focus on colleges and universities during an election year.
Recently, House Republican leaders disclosed comprehensive inquiries into whether these institutions are effectively safeguarding Jewish students from discrimination and adhering to federal civil rights regulations—and issued warnings of a potential withdrawal of federal funding from non-compliant institutions.
Under Foxx’s rigorous examination thus far, universities and their leaders have faced significant challenges. The initial hearing led to the downfall of the presidents of Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania, both of whom testified in December. Their defense of students’ protest rights and ambiguity regarding the definition of antisemitism, as well as their failure to decisively address whether advocating for the genocide of Jews breached campus codes of conduct, resulted in their resignations within one month after testifying.
Foxx’s committee’s interrogation of Columbia University’s president Minouche Shafik on April 17 sparked significant backlash against the latter, catalyzing a subsequent wave of nationwide protests, encampments, and arrests. Shafik, for her part, enlisted the NYPD to dismantle an encampment on a university lawn the morning of her hearing. Shafik is nevertheless under mounting pressure to resign.
The UCLA and Yale administrators have aligned with Shafik in quelling pro-Hamas protests and resorting to police intervention to disband encampments. According to an Associated Press tally as of Friday morning, more than 2,100 individuals have been arrested in connection with protests nationwide, at least half of whom are professional agitators, mostly not enrolled in the schools they help terrorize.
The US Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights has initiated investigations into Yale, UCLA, and Michigan University in response to complaints regarding discrimination based on shared ancestry, encompassing Jews and Muslims, which is prohibited under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The department has launched over 130 investigations of this nature since the Hamas massacre of October 7, 2023.
