Reps. Stefanik and Moskowitz demand Harvard, MIT and UPenn presidents be fired over handling of antisemitism on campus

Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) demanded Friday that the presidents of Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania be immediately fired over their handling of antisemitism on campus.

The two lawmakers sent a bipartisan letter — signed by 72 of their colleagues — to board members of the three vaunted institutions arguing that the university leaders “enabled” the “dehumanization” of Jewish people and calling for an “action plan” to be put in place on each campus to ensure the protection of Jewish and Israeli students and faculty.

“Jewish students should have found comfort on their campuses. Instead, many Jewish and Israeli students have faced an increasingly hostile educational environment, in the form of targeted harassment, protesters calling for the elimination of the Jewish state, and even acts of violence,” the letter states. 

“This is a clear result of the failure of university leadership,” the lawmakers argue. 

Claudine Gay, Liz McGill and Sally Kornbluth — the presidents of Harvard, UPenn and MIT, respectively — took heat on Capitol Hill earlier this week, after being grilled by House lawmakers over their response to on-campus protests calling for violent armed resistance against the state of Israel and Israeli civilians, as well as the genocide of Jews.

Gay and McGill evaded questions from Stefanik on whether violent anti-Jewish demonstrations that have swept their institutions following the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack on Israel violated codes of conduct at the Ivy League schools.  

Gay stressed that while she finds antisemitic speech “personally abhorrent,” Harvard is committed to “free expression and give[s] a wide berth to free expression, even of views that are objectionable.”

McGill said her institution would only consider calls for the genocide of the Jewish people bullying or harassment “If it is directed and severe, pervasive.”

“It is a context-dependent decision,” the UPenn president added. 

Kornbluth responded that such language violated conduct codes only if “targeting individuals, not making public statements.”

“We have heard chants which can be antisemitic depending on the context when calling for the elimination of the Jewish people,” the MIT leader said. 

Stefanik and Moskowitz were not satisfied with what they heard from the university presidents during their testimony. 

“The university presidents’ responses to questions aimed at addressing the growing trend of antisemitism on college and university campuses were abhorrent,” they wrote in Friday’s letter. “When pushed on whether calling for the genocide of Jews violates university policies on bullying or harassment, Presidents Gay (Harvard), Kornbluth (MIT), and Magill (Penn) were evasive and dismissive, failing to simply condemn such action. This should have been an easy and resounding ‘yes.’”

“Given this moment of crisis, we demand that your boards immediately remove each of these presidents from their positions and that you provide an actionable plan to ensure that Jewish and Israeli students, teachers, and faculty are safe on your campuses.”

“Anything less than these steps will be seen as your endorsement of what Presidents Gay, Magill, and Kornbluth said to Congress and an act of complicity in their antisemitic posture. The world is watching – you can stand with your Jewish students and faculty, or you can choose the side of dangerous antisemitism,” the letter concludes. 

Stefanik announced Thursday that a formal congressional investigation into the three universities will be launched.