Three college presidents apologized for not acting more aggressively to curb antisemitism on their campuses during a House committee hearing on Wednesday, in what Republicans billed as an effort to examine colleges beyond the Ivy League.
“I am sorry that my actions and my leadership let you down,” Wendy Raymond, the president of Haverford College, a Quaker college outside Philadelphia, said she would like her Jewish students to know. “I am committed to getting this right.”
The House Committee on Education and the Workforce has held a number of hearings with schools since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and the war in Gaza that followed. In many ways the hearing echoed the first and most dramatic of them, in December 2023, which led to the resignations of the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and of Harvard.
During the hearing on Wednesday, the Republican majority threatened to withhold federal funding from uncooperative schools. The Democratic minority accused Republicans of tolerating antisemitism in their own party while using it as a political weapon against others. And university leaders tried to walk a delicate line between showing contrition and not antagonizing the committee, while not undermining academic freedom.
But it was also a very different moment for higher education and its relationship with the federal government.
The hearing looked back mostly to events from a year ago, when campuses across the country were reeling from protest encampments and mass arrests. The war continues, but protests have largely faded, with some notable exceptions.
One protest at the University of Washington drew widespread attention this week, but the university quickly cleared demonstrators, to praise from the government. And at Columbia on Wednesday, dozens of pro-Palestinian protesters, wearing masks and kaffiyehs, occupied the main room of Butler Library.
Meanwhile, the Republican onslaught against universities has only intensified.
The Trump administration has opened investigations at dozens of universities over accusations of antisemitism, and stripped hundreds of millions of dollars from others it says have not done enough to respond to issues raised by the protests, most of them in Democrat-leaning states. President Trump and his officials have focused especially on the schools in the Ivy League.
The congressional hearing on Wednesday was titled “Beyond the Ivies.” “Bottom line, we are trying to highlight that this is a problem affecting schools across America, not just the Ivy League,” Audra McGeorge, a committee spokeswoman, said.
The hearing focused on schools that received F grades from the Anti-Defamation League. This time around, the three presidents, of Haverford, DePaul University in Chicago, and California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo knew what questions to expect and were able largely to finesse them. (Cal Poly recently raised its grade to a D.)
But after refusing to provide statistics on disciplinary cases against protesters, Haverford’s president, Dr. Raymond, came in for especially dogged questioning from Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican. Her harsh interrogations were largely responsible for the damage that helped drive other university presidents to resign.
Ms. Stefanik questioned Dr. Raymond about a student group that called for dismantling the state of Israel “by all means necessary,” asking: “What does by ‘all means necessary’ mean to you?”
“Invoking that kind of terminology is repugnant because of what it can mean,” Dr. Raymond replied, stressing the word “can.”
“Does that depend on the context?” Ms. Stefanik interrupted.
Dr. Raymond had been forewarned by the experiences of the presidents of Harvard and Penn. Both gave noncommittal answers to questions about whether they would discipline students who called for the genocide of Jews. Both said that doing so would depend on the context.
Dr. Raymond evaded the “context” question, saying that she would not talk about individual cases.
To which Ms. Stefanik threatened: “Many people have sat in this position who are no longer in the positions as presidents of universities for their failure to answer straightforward questions.”
In the year and a half since that December 2023 hearing, many university leaders appear to have been attentive to the complaints from students, faculty and lawmakers, and to the fate of their peers.
Many schools have tightened rules related to protests, locked campus gates to outsiders and issued harsher punishments for participants. The moves may help explain why protests were less frequent and widespread this spring. Many universities have also banned or suspended the most militant pro-Palestinian activist groups.
“Both as a university president and a human being, this is a matter I take particularly seriously,” Jeffrey D. Armstrong, president of Cal Poly, told the committee. “We have to do better.”
He ticked off plans like endowing a chair in Jewish studies and establishing a task force to increase awareness of antisemitism.
On Wednesday, Republicans followed what has become a favored playbook, pushing schools to respond to their complaints by threatening to withhold federal funding.
Ryan Mackenzie, a Pennsylvania Republican, demanded that Dr. Raymond collect information about the punishment of students and professors at Haverford and deliver it to the committee or else risk losing federal funding.
“You do receive federal money, do you not?” he said.
“We do, in a wonderful partnership with the federal government,” Dr. Raymond replied.
“Well, that partnership may be in jeopardy,” Mr. Mackenzie said.
When her turn to question the presidents came, Representative Suzanne Bonamici, an Oregon Democrat, dismissed the hearing as a performance.
Ms. Bonamici said that as a synagogue-going Jew, “I can no longer pretend that this is a good-faith effort to root out antisemitism, especially when the Trump administration and the majority party are regularly undermining Jewish values.”
David Cole, a former national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, testified along with the presidents. He compared the committee’s activities to the Communist-hunting of the 1950s. “They are not an attempt to find out what happened but an attempt to chill protected speech,” he said.
Mr. Cole also said that the Trump administration had gutted the government’s ability to investigate discrimination complaints by cutting the staff of the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.
The Trump administration has, nonetheless, promised over 60 investigations into schools over complaints they have allowed antisemitism to fester on their campuses.
On Wednesday night, the University of Washington said it had received notice that a federal task force to combat antisemitism, formed by President Trump, was starting a review of the university’s federal grants and contracts. The review came after demonstrators occupied an engineering building for several hours on Monday, damaging the building and setting dumpster fires outside, according to the university. The police arrested 34 people, including 21 students, who have been suspended and banned from campus, the university said.
In its most recent fiscal year, about 18 percent of the university’s revenues came from grants and contracts, with most of those dollars coming from the federal government.
Alan Blinder contributed reporting from Atlanta.
