In Case You Missed It, Education and the Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) joined American Enterprise Institute Research Fellow Max Eden for a discussion on the impact of the Committee’s ongoing antisemitism investigation and oversight efforts to restore accountability in postsecondary education.
On squaring concerns of antisemitism with a commitment to freedom of speech and academic freedom:
The American people are pouring billions of dollars every year into these institutions, and yes, we have a right to hold them accountable for how the money is being spent.
There’s a difference between free speech and antisemitism, a huge difference. … Antisemitism is not acceptable under academic freedom.
What the institutions of postsecondary education want is just give them all the money in the world that they asked for and leave them alone. And if you do try to hold them accountable, they’ll scream academic freedom.
I think that in many cases neither professors nor students understand what free speech is because they are not learning the concept of free speech.
We’ve actually introduced a bill on free speech issues, … Respecting the First Amendment on Campus [Act]. What we’re trying to do is make sure that campuses do a better job of … having students understand what their rights are under the Constitution in terms of free speech and what the constraints are on the colleges and universities.
On the findings of the Committee’s Harvard investigative update:
Most of the condemning words in that report came from Harvard faculty who were on the [Antisemitism Advisory Group (AAG)].
[The AAG] was appointed by Claudine Gay to look at the accusations of antisemitism on the campus, and they actually gave her that report before she came and testified to our Committee. But [Harvard] ignored it.
You would think that the Biden Education Department would have seized on this report, and pushed up the complaints from students at Harvard to the top of the list.
It’s really a heartrending report. We’ve done the work for [the Department of Education] … and just like Claudine Gay, they’re ignoring the clear evidence of antisemitism that’s on the campus.
It’s not just the feeling of antisemitism, it’s terrible actions taken against students—students being spat upon, students being pushed, students having their jewelry taken away from them.
On combatting foreign funding on college campuses:
Under the Trump administration, Secretary DeVos noted that colleges and universities were not abiding by [Section 117] of the Higher Education Act by reporting foreign gifts.
We have passed a bill out of the House called the DETERRENT Act because we’re very concerned with what impact foreign money can have on institutions.
We want to know … what’s coming into the universities, what’s coming into the departments, … [and] what’s coming into individual faculty members. We’re going down into the institution to say we need to know what kind of money you’re getting, where is it going, and ultimately what will be the purpose of this money.
We think the American people have a right to know.
