Following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, protests have erupted and tensions have risen at schools like Cornell, Columbia and NYU. These incidents have sometimes turned violent with students fearing for their safety.
Lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee examined the current state of the First Amendment and several alleged free speech violations on campuses in a hearing this week.
The hearing’s conversation was dominated by events related to the Israel-Hamas war, and pro-Palestinian protestors interrupted the hearing for about five minutes.
The panel included six witnesses: three who specialize in antisemitism work, a Jewish student at Cornell University, and two students who were leaders for conservative organizations at their universities.
All students said that, at some point during their educational training, they did not feel safe on their campuses because of their beliefs. Jasmyn Jordan, from the University of Iowa, and Connor Ogrydziak, a recent graduate of the State University of New York at Buffalo, both said tensions over free speech on college and university campuses have been simmering for years.
They told lawmakers that left-leaning students successfully shut down their conservative events preventing conservative speakers from sharing their values on campus.
Ogrydziak described the time his conservative organization hosted Lt. Colonel Allen West for an on-campus discussion.
“The most striking action taken against us followed Lieutenant Colonel West’s speech, which had included a discussion of race in America and accounts from his decorated past,” Ogrydziak said. “When the floor was opened to questions and answers session, student protestors shouted from their seats before the audiovisual employees from the UB student association, the student government, cut powers to the event’s microphones and speakers ending the session. Confrontations continued upon the exit from the event and once outside, as you just saw in the video before the opening statements, chapter members were chased by a 100-person mob across campus.”
Jordan described similar events that she said happened to her just a few months ago when her organization at the University of Iowa hosted Matt Walsh, a conservative podcaster with the Daily Wire.
“When a leftist doesn’t want to hear a speaker, they do everything they can to shut the lecture down,” Jordan said. “Our club recently hosted Matt Walsh. Students and faculty were willing to do everything to cancel the event just because they found Walsh’s speech to be offensive. Some people were so dedicated to silencing our voices that literally when one of us was advertising with chalk, a leftist student was erasing each of those letters with a wipe. We received death threats along with plenty of verbal harassment. That night, before the speaking event, my hallmate, who happened to be on the one erasing the chalk, stalked outside of my bedroom door by putting his ear on it, to see if I was in my room because he was just so outraged by my involvement.”
Jordan broke down in tears while testifying.
Witness testimony also focused on the rise of antisemitism on college campuses since the Israel-Hamas war began last month. Amanda Silberstein, a Jewish student at Cornell, said she’s in constant fear while on campus, because last week, a fellow student, Patrick Dai, 21, was arrested after posting antisemitic threats online calling for the killing and injuring of his fellow Jewish classmates.
“Imagine that you frequent Jewish events on campus,” Silberstein said. “Imagine that you live in a Jewish sorority house. Then imagine scrolling on your phone one day only to discover that a fellow student wants to shoot up the kosher dining hall and, and I quote ‘gang rape all Jew pig women on campus.’ That is what my peers and I experienced last week when reading the multiple online threats made by a fellow student instructing other Cornell students to assault Jews on campus to follow them home and slit their throats. This was not just hate speech. This was a call to action and an immediate threat.”
As House Republicans and Democrats listened to witness testimony, they seemingly agreed with each other that antisemitism, and students not feeling safe on their school property because of their beliefs, is a serious problem. However, lawmakers could not seem to agree on a solution.
Democrats said Congress should provide more funding for the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights which handles discrimination complaints at higher education institutes.
“There is a clear policy solution to combating the rise of antisemitism and other abhorrent discrimination on college campuses,” Rep. Rebecca Balint (D-VT) said. “And that is to fully fund the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. Budgets, when you’re in government, budgets are a statement of your values. How we spend money demonstrates what we really care about. And we should care about the rise in hateful speech and dehumanizing language in America, generally, and specifically as is the topic of this hearing, on college and university campuses.”
Republicans believe more federal dollars won’t fix the issue. Right now, some Republican lawmakers have proposed reducing the OCR’s budget by $35 million in the 2024 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education spending bill.
“By the time it gets to the Office of Civil Rights, we have failed them,” Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-WI) said. “So, Mr. Marcus, why would we put more federal dollars into something like this? I think this part of what you’re hearing from some of us up here is we are saying, ‘Is there really a federal role? Should we be pumping more federal dollars in?’”
On Tuesday, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights wrote in a Dear Colleague letter that colleges and universities that receive federal financial assistance have an obligation to “address prohibited discrimination against students… including those who are or are perceived to be Jewish, Israeli, Muslim, Arab, or Palestinian.”
Next week, the Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development will hold a hearing titled “Confronting the Scourge of Antisemitism on Campus.”
