The presidents of top universities are facing calls to resign over their testimony at a congressional hearing on antisemitism.
Their answers to a line of questions from New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, in particular, have sparked fierce pushback.
Stefanik, during the hearing, asked the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania, MIT and Harvard about how they would respond to calls for the genocide of Jews.
“Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn's rules or code of conduct? Yes or no?” she asked Elizabeth Magill, the president of Penn.
“If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment, yes,” Magill replied.
“Conduct meaning committing the act of genocide? The speech is not harassment?” Stefanik replied later in the exchange.
She also asked the president of Harvard, Claudine Gay, if “calling for the genocide of Jews violates Harvard's Code of Conduct.”
“It depends on the context,” Gay said in response.
Those replies have sparked a backlash and calls for resignation. Their attempts to cleanup the comments have not quelled the anger.
Members of the GOP-led House Committee on Education and the Workforce announced Thursday they will be investigating the three schools, and warned that other universities should expect investigations as well.
The committee, as of Friday, did not say if any New York institutions were on that list.
Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff weighed in on the controversy at Thursday night’s lighting of the National Menorah.
“We’ve seen the presidents of some of our most elite universities literally unable to denounce calling for the genocide of Jews as antisemitic,” he said. “That lack of moral clarity is simply unacceptable.”
The top Democrat in the House, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of Brooklyn, said it is important for every university leader to make clear that antisemitism has “no place on a single college campus.”
He also dinged the GOP over spending cuts they proposed earlier this year to the Department of Education.
“Extreme MAGA Republicans in the House actually want to gut and defang the Office of Civil Rights,” he said. “Our Republican colleagues are not serious individuals, for the most part, on this issue.”
Speaking in Albany on Friday, Gov. Kathy Hochul called the comments from the university leaders "enormously distressing."
She said she will be sending out a letter, affirming "our commitment and our belief that that language does violate, not just the code of conduct, but also violates federal civil rights law or something called Title VI.
"You must protect students from an environment – a hostile environment – and they violate that if they allow that to go on their campuses," she said.