Washington (AP) – House Republicans have founded the leaders of Georgetown University, the City University of New York and the University of California, Berkeley, in the recent hearing on anti -Semitism in university formation and not adequately react to prejudices or discrimination.
In their appearance in front of the house committee for education and workforce, the three university leaders said that they might have taken disciplinary measures and emphasized how significant it is to protect freedom of speech.
UC Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons pushed back the proposal that anti -Semitism was more on the College Campus than somewhere else.
“If someone puts pro-Palestinian beliefs, it is not necessarily anti-Semitic,” he said.
The hearing was the ninth row of a series that the Republicans captured to check the university leadership due to allegations of anti -Semitism on campus after a wave of protests after the attacks by Hamas on Israel for a wave of protests. The widely criticized testimony before the committee of the President of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University in 2023 contributed to their resignation.
At the hearing on Tuesday, the Democrats gave up the members of the Republican Committee on anti -Semitism because of their focus, while they did not speak out about disassembling the educational department, which is commissioned to investigate anti -Semitism and other violations of civil rights in schools.
“You have transformed this listening room into a Kangaroo dish, where you spend our time to guide a given result so as not to help Jewish students simply make public theater out of legitimate pain,” rep. Mark Takano, D-CA.
The Republicans said that the university leaders had allowed campus anti -Semitism to run uncontrollably.
“Universities can choose to hire anti -Semitic faculties, to welcome students with anti -Semitism in the past, to accept certain foreign funds and to have the behavior of anti -Semitic unions deactivated,” said the chairman of the Michigan Rep. Tim Walberg, chairman of the committee, in his opening stands. “But today we will see that you do this at your own risk.”
The hearing was regularly interrupted by demonstrators who shouted Pro-Palestinian slogans before they were removed from Capitol Police. Rep. Randy Fine, R-Fl, insulted the college president and said they were responsible for the attitudes they had allowed on their campus.
The Republicans pushed the three college leaders on whether they had released the faculty and employees because they said they were anti -Semitic. MP Elise Stefanik, Rn.Y., pressed the Cuny Chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez on the employment of a legal professor who worked at Mahmoud Khalil’s right to defend a Palestinian activist who tried to claim his role in protests at Columbia University.
Stefanik urged Matos Rodríguez to answer whether the professor should be fired. Without reacting directly, Matos defended Rodríguez Cuny and said that anti -Semitism has no place at school. He said that a student or employee who broke the rules of the Cuny rules would be examined.
University manager also emphasized the importance of freedom of speech on the campus for students and faculties.
Richard Groves, President of Interim Georgetown, said that the promotion of interreligious dialogue and understanding as Jesuit university was an crucial part of the school mission. He said that the university had not experienced any camps or physical violence since the Hamas attack in October 2023.
“In view of our Jesuit values, we expose the students to different points of view in the Middle East,” said Grove. “In addition to the speakers of the Gaza Strip, we organized IDF soldiers, families of Israeli and Palestinians who have lost their lives. Us of the US -Geiseln in Gaza. Georgetown is not perfect, and if the events develop, we had to clarify the rules of the behavior of the student.”
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