A new report from a Republican-led congressional committee reveals private conversations between administrators, faculty members, and board members as they debated how to respond to the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war and the resulting pro-Palestinian encampments.
The 325-page report stems from a monthslong investigation by the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce that has scrutinized campus anti-war activism. Student protests spiked in the spring, mostly in the form of encampments demanding that colleges sever financial ties with companies aiding Israel’s military in carrying out strikes on Gaza. So far, nearly all colleges have refused to consider divestment.
Republican lawmakers have for months argued that colleges permitted protests that veered into antisemitism in the name of protecting free speech. The new report doubled down on those claims.
In describing “a stunning lack of accountability” by administrators, the report said that college leaders turned a blind eye to antisemitic harassment — in possible violation of Title VI, the federal law barring discrimination based on shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics — as well as trespassing and other criminal behavior.
Even when students were disciplined, the report said, it was uneven and minimal.
The text messages and emails from colleges followed a subpoena from the House committee to colleges — the first time the committee had taken such a step, the report said.
Here are three key exchanges in the report.
1. Harvard University officials decided not to condemn Hamas following the October 7 attack.
When drafting a university statement about the attack, administrators fiercely debated whether to include the words “we denounce this act of terror” in reference to Hamas, considered by the U.S. government to be a foreign terrorist organization. In a series of emails, officials also disagreed on whether to describe the Hamas attack as “violent.”
The chief of staff to Claudine Gay, then Harvard’s president, suggested that any denunciation of Hamas should be coupled with a statement recognizing the “complex” and “deeply divided” nature of the issue.
Administrators also considered whether to explicitly distance the university from a widely panned statement issued by Harvard student groups, which argued that Israel was “entirely responsible” for the Hamas attack.
The published version of Harvard’s October 9 statement did not include language condemning Hamas or calling attention to the student groups’ statement.
At one point, Gay weighed in on a dispute over how to describe the October 7 attack. She endorsed a sentence that mentioned both the attack and the “war in Israel and Gaza now underway.” It was important, she wrote in an email, to “identify unequivocally the catalyst (i.e., the Hamas attack) but I agree with others who have weighed in that it’s important to also acknowledge how the conflict has evolved over the last 72 hours,” referencing Israel’s military response in Gaza.
2. Northwestern University’s provost discussed the possibility of boycotting an Israeli hummus brand.
In text messages, a Northwestern professor who’d been tapped by the administration to negotiate with protesters encouraged Provost Kathleen Hagerty to stop serving Sabra hummus on campus. Hagerty responded, “That’s probably pretty easy.” The professor said a boycott of the Israeli company would be symbolically valuable to students. The provost added: “I’m all for making a deal. Bargaining in action!”
Northwestern was one of the first institutions nationwide to reach an agreement with protesters to disband their encampment. The agreement did not include any references to Sabra hummus.
During another exchange, Northwestern’s president, Michael Schill, who testified at a congressional hearing on antisemitism in May, assured the executive director of Northwestern Hillel that the administration had “said a definitive no to all” of the protesters’ demands.
“I know members of the Jewish community will think we caved, but we obviously didn’t and will not,” Schill said.
3. A former Columbia University board chair called faculty leaders “antisemites.”
Jonathan Lavine, a chair of Columbia’s Board of Trustees from 2018 to 2023, wrote in a February text to David Greenwald, current co-chair of the board, that a disciplinary process influenced by certain faculty members on the University Senate would not lead to meaningful punishments for student protesters who violated campus rules.
If the university put in place a new protest policy “and then [had] the antisemites on the senate in charge of discipline and enforcing it it will also fail,” Lavine said.
At a congressional hearing in April, Nemat (Minouche) Shafik, then the university’s president, said that students who had occupied a campus building as part of an escalation of their encampment would be expelled. The committee’s new report alleged that the students were ultimately let off the hook: Eighteen of the 22 students were restored to good academic standing, and seven of them were allowed to graduate.
In a May text, Lavine told Greenwald that Columbia’s faculty was planning a no-confidence vote in Shafik over her decision to call the police on protesters. “I think the board should take a no-confidence vote of the senate and faculty leadership,” Lavine said.
