Press Releases

Education and Workforce Committee Chairman Tim Walberg (R-MI) and Higher Education and Workforce Development Subcommittee Chairman Burgess Owens (R-UT) sent a follow-up letter to the President and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Sarah Lawrence College requesting more details about the safety of Jewish students on campus. 
 
The letter, which follows a March 27 request, comes amid reports of a hostile antisemitic environment in which faculty and administrators are reportedly contributing to antisemitic harassment of Jewish students on the Sarah Lawrence campus.

In the letter, Walberg and Owens write: “Reports indicate that Sammy Tweedy, a Jewish student who had been harassed and bullied throughout the 2022-2023 academic year, received violent and threatening text messages from members of Sarah Lawrence’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) after the October 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel. This included a message telling him that he ‘should have been killed in Israel.’  He left Sarah Lawrence, in part because of the college’s ‘refusal to protect him.’ Multiple other students have also left Sarah Lawrence or considered doing so because of antisemitism on campus. Meanwhile, last fall students reportedly targeted a Jewish professor at Sarah Lawrence because he is a ‘staunch advocate of Israel’s right to self-defense.’ These students reportedly waged a boycott campaign and pressured others individually not to take the professor’s class. The Committee is concerned about the role of administrators and faculty in potentially contributing to this environment.”

The letter continues: “[W]hen administrators and faculty show support for Hamas’ actions, or when they show support for student groups that support Hamas, Jewish students perceive these statements as threatening not only to the state of Israel but to the Jewish people more broadly. Indeed, anti-Zionist student groups across the U.S. have, alongside their anti-Israel advocacy, repeatedly fomented and engaged in antisemitic harassment. At Sarah Lawrence, this pattern appears to have continued. Having students walk around campus fearing that they will be physically assaulted or otherwise attacked creates a hostile environment on campus that Sarah Lawrence would be obligated to respond to under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VI).”
 
The letter also states: “Title VI requires colleges accepting federal funds to promptly address and eliminate a hostile environment, which could include investigating the incident, condemning the statements made, implementing policy changes such as time, place, and manner restrictions, providing training to combat antisemitism, and other measures. The Committee is seeking to understand whether, as reports suggest, there was or is a hostile environment on Sarah Lawrence’s campus and whether the college responded to incidents such as those described in this letter. Therefore, the Committee reiterates its request for all documents related to disciplinary action taken against students or faculty involved in the November 2024 takeover and occupation of Westlands and the accompanying encampment.”

Read the full letter here.

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