When college presidents go before the U.S. House’s Committee on Education and the Workforce to talk about antisemitism and campus protests, the stakes are high. That’s even more true now that President Trump has retaken office and acted on campaign promises to go after colleges’ federal funding.
A three-hour-long hearing on Wednesday once again gave House Republicans the opportunity to amplify reports of antisemitic social-media posts, events, and confrontations, and to demand that institutions provide information on how they discipline students and faculty members who transgress. It also enabled Democrats to call out the Trump administration’s hobbling of the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, where 40 percent of the staff have been laid off.
In late 2023 and early 2024, the presidents of Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania resigned — shortly after they were panned for equivocal answers to the House committee’s questions about whether calling for the genocide of Jews was permissible speech.
This time, lawmakers singled out institutions that haven’t gotten much public attention and aren’t currently under federal scrutiny: Haverford College, in Pennsylvania, DePaul University, in Chicago, and California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo. That’s part of why their presidents were tapped to testify, a spokesman for the committee told The Chronicle ahead of the hearing.
But lawmakers seeking to make a point had material to work with. The three campuses all saw pro-Palestinian protests and alleged incidents of antisemitic harassment following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel. At DePaul, two Jewish students were assaulted last fall. At Haverford, Jewish students, employees, parents, and alumni sued the college last year, alleging that administrators had turned a blind eye to discrimination. A judge dismissed the lawsuit in January; the plaintiffs have since filed an amended complaint.
Another difference from the committee’s past antisemitism hearings was that the presidents — Wendy Raymond, of Haverford, Robert Manuel, of DePaul, and Jeffrey Armstrong, of Cal Poly — were being asked to reflect on events that in some cases happened more than a year and a half ago. (David Cole, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and former national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, was also present, answering questions about free speech and civil-rights law as the Democrats’ witness.)
Wednesday’s hearing marked yet another expansion of Republicans’ efforts to put higher ed under pressure. Since January, the Trump administration has canceled or frozen grants at several prominent research universities, largely for alleged failures to combat antisemitism. Dozens more colleges received letters from the U.S. Department of Education warning about potential enforcement actions if they didn’t protect Jewish students’ safety.
Likely with that context in mind, the presidents were adamant in admitting that they’d fallen short in some ways.
Raymond and Manuel, in their opening remarks, expressed regret for letting their communities down, while Armstrong pointed to accountability and disciplinary measures. All three, in their initial remarks and then in answering questions, emphasized commitments to supporting Jewish life on campus and policy changes made to improve campus safety.
“To our students, our parents, our faculty, our staff, our alumni, and our friends, I am deeply sorry,” Manuel said. “I know there are areas where we must and will do better.” He then acknowledged the attack on two Jewish students last year. “What happened to them was a hate crime.”
Armstrong said Cal Poly deploys campus police officers “whenever there is potential for threatening activity or trouble” and imposes “immediate university discipline” when antisemitic harassment occurs.
The chair of the House committee, Tim Walberg, Republican of Michigan, questioned the three presidents on how many students and student groups had been punished for breaking campus rules. While Armstrong and Manuel gave direct answers, Raymond said Haverford doesn’t publicize those numbers. Haverford, with an undergraduate student population of about 1,400, is much smaller than DePaul, which had an enrollment of more than 14,000 in the fall of 2023, and Cal Poly, with over 21,000 undergrads, so students may be more easily identified.
That exchange set the tone for the rest of the hearing, which saw lawmakers press Raymond for specifics and Raymond deflect, speaking generally about the college’s commitment to fighting antisemitism. While lawmakers challenged Manuel on not taking DePaul’s encampment down sooner and sought to learn more from Armstrong about Cal Poly’s engagement with Jewish students, they came after Raymond the hardest, chastising her for not firing a professor who allegedly wrote a social-media post comparing Nazism to Zionism.
“For the American people watching, you still don’t get it,” Rep. Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, said to Raymond. “Haverford still doesn’t get it.” Stefanik has become known for her pointed questioning of college presidents at such hearings.
After Raymond refused to share disciplinary outcomes, Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, Republican of Pennsylvania, said Haverford’s federal funding “may be in jeopardy.” As a small liberal-arts college, Haverford doesn’t receive a lot of research dollars, but it does participate in Title IV financial-aid programs.
“If you will not provide transparency and accountability like your other colleagues here, it calls into question your actions on your campus,” Mackenzie said, adding that both Congress and the Department of Education should look into Haverford.
Lindsey Tepe, director of government relations at the American Council on Education, said withholding federal funds should always be a last resort — a step taken when a college is refusing to change.
“That is not constructive, and that is certainly not following due process,” she said.
Gustavus Stadler, an English professor at Haverford and a member of its American Association of University Professors chapter, suggested the disproportionate attention on Raymond may have been misogynistic. He noted that lawmakers accidentally called her “Miss Haverford” instead of “President Raymond” on two occasions.
Stadler said he was pleased with Raymond’s performance and choice not to divulge sensitive information. “I was really happy to see her resist their attempts to meddle with the institution,” he said.
Tepe said that in spite of the “political theater” that dominated the hearing, there were some “meaningful exchanges” that allowed presidents to highlight policy reforms and inclusion efforts.
“We need to focus on what’s working to mitigate antisemitism,” Tepe said, “and we need to think about what that looks like at the diversity of different colleges and universities in this country.”
