STEFANIK (played by Chloe Troast). So, Penn lady, will you say you are anti-anti-anti-anti-antisemitic?
MAGILL (played by Heidi Gardner). Can you tell me how many ‘anti’s’ that was?
STEFANIK. I will not.
MAGILL. You’re asking us questions that seem very unfair.
STEFANIK. Oh (giggles), thank you
— Saturday Night Live, cold open, Dec. 9, 2023
A new front has opened in the classroom culture wars. Brought to you by the same folks who cooked up last year’s political hysterics over “CRT” (whatever that means), book bans, bathroom bills, “don’t say gay” laws and false allegations about pedophiles in the teachers’ lounge and students who identify as cats.
This time they’ve got higher ed in the crosshairs, and they’ve somehow managed to trivialize the very serious issue of antisemitism.
Frankly, it looks like a variation on the same old, same old teacher bashing and K-12 culture wars we’ve been seeing since at least the Reagan administration. But there’s a new wrinkle — unfounded allegations of “rampant antisemitism” on college campuses. They went viral (in more than one sense of the word) last week at a hearing of the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce, chaired by Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C.
Certainly antisemitism is a deeply rooted evil, endemic in Western culture for 2,000 years, and it’s been on the upswing since 2016 (after dropping for nearly 15 years). Since the war between Israel and Hamas broke out Oct. 7, the Anti-Defamation League reported 2,031 antisemitic incidents nationwide and the Council on American-Islamic Relations logged 2,171 complaints and requests for help in the same time period.
But I’m not convinced that either antisemitism or Islamophobia are “rampant” on campus. (In that regard, it’s kinda like Hunter Biden’s alleged laptop — I’m sure there’s something of substance out there, but I have yet to see convincing evidence the committee isn’t going down a rabbit hole of its own creation.) Nor am I sure that “antisemitism” is the best word for it.
Whatever it is, Rep. Foxx attempted to define it in an interview with Elizabeth Vargas of the NewsNation cable TV network. Her committee conveyed, perhaps more tellingly than intended, its focus when it shared the NewsNation video to its official YouTube channel, citing “the Committee’s recent action in opening a formal congressional investigation into elite schools after the widespread backlash against Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology presidents for their failure to strongly condemn the rampant antisemitism occurring on their campuses during a congressional hearing on December 5th.”
The definition Foxx offered on TV was equally telling:
When you call for destroying a whole country, and for infada-, infina-, uh (laughs), for genocide on the campuses, you’re calling for action. So there is a difference between calling for action and saying what you feel about things. So there is a big difference, and we’re very careful not to impinge on free speech in the actions that we take in the committee.
Presumably the word Foxx was searching for was intifada, an Arabic word that translates as “shaking off,” uprising or rebellion. Webster’s adds specifically, “an armed uprising of Palestinians against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.”
One might hope that the chair of a committee investigating the reaction to a Palestinian uprising would be more familiar with a word like intifada. More to the point, it doesn’t mean what House Republicans seem to think it means. Foxx was clearly equating the word she couldn’t pronounce with genocide, defined by the United Nations in 1948 as “a crime committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part.” Whatever demonstrators at Penn, Harvard and MIT may have been up to, it didn’t fit that definition.
Foxx wasn’t alone in her confusion.
Rep. Elyse Stefanik, R-N.Y., also characterized “the term ‘intifada’ as synonymous with genocide,” according to Evan Mandery, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Chicago. That, he said in a Politico opinion piece, was not only inaccurate but a dangerous assault on free speech and academic freedom. He explained:
Stefanik referenced Harvard students chanting during marches, “There is only one solution. Intifada revolution,” and “Globalize the Intifada.” She then asked Gay, “You understand that this call for intifada is to commit genocide against the Jewish people in Israel and globally, correct?”
Gay responded, “That type of hateful speech is personally abhorrent to me,” thereby distancing herself from antisemitism but effectively conceding the premise of Stefanik’s question and missing an important opportunity to reset the conversation. “Intifada” — the Arabic word for “uprising” — has been used since the 1980s to describe Palestinian revolts against Israel, and while it undoubtedly has been used by Hamas to advocate for the eradication of Jews, the term has no inherent connection to the concept of genocide.
Stefanik was dead flat wrong, of course. But Mandery faulted the Ivy League presidents as much — or more — than he did the partisans on the committee. For failing to, well, to educate:
On one of the most polarizing issues of our time, in one of the most polarized periods in human history, it would have been important to challenge a characterization of the facts as more extreme than they actually are.
It would have been important, too, to counter the subtler premise in Stefanik’s question, which ironically is one of the moves that conservatives most detest in the “woke” left — evaluating language by the listener’s sensitivities and reactions rather the speaker’s intended meaning. The danger in this is obvious. Last month, 65 student groups declared in the Northwestern University student newspaper, “When we say, ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,’” — the slogan for which the Republican-controlled House censured Rep. Rashida Tlaib — “we imagine a world free of Islamophobia, antisemitism, anti-Blackness, militarism, occupation and apartheid.” Surely that is protected speech by any imaginable definition. [Links in the original.]
Mandery also suggested the forced resignation of Penn’s now former president Elizabeth Magill “has the potential to be an ignominious, watershed moment in American history.” He said:
I’m a Jew and, heaven knows, no one has been more critical of elite colleges than I’ve been, but the greatest intellectual threat of these times is neither antisemitism nor Ivy League schools — it’s to academic freedom and the First Amendment’s protection of speech. Without a rapid course correction, Magill’s ouster will undermine the values of the American academy and the essence of what it means to be a college student. [Link to Mandery’s book Poison Ivy: How Elite Colleges Divide Us in the original.]
“One down. Two to go,” Stefanik tweeted when Magill’s resignation was announced. “This is only the very beginning of addressing the pervasive rot of antisemitism that has destroyed the most ‘prestigious’ higher education institutions in America.”
Lost in the viral sound bites is what Penn actually did during Magill’s tenure in office to combat antisemitism on campus. After several weeks of controversy over an on-campus Palestinian literary festival, it was spelled out in an Action Plan to Combat Antisemitism announced Nov. 1. Six weeks before the House committee hearing! The introduction cites the university’s “long history of being an especially welcoming place for Jewish people,” and adds:
Like many, however, we are deeply troubled by resurgent antisemitism, hatred, and bigotry in society and on college campuses. Penn must do more. Antisemitism can take many forms. Incidents on Penn’s campus this fall—an individual shouting antisemitic obscenities and destroying property in Hillel, a swastika painted in an academic building, and hateful graffiti outside of a fraternity—are recent examples. Regardless of form, they are all appalling and unacceptable. We unequivocally condemn such hateful acts. They are an assault on our values and mission as an institution and have no place at Penn. We recognize it is our collective responsibility as a community to stand clearly and strongly against antisemitism in all its odious forms. Penn has work to do.
Penn is committed to a whole-University approach, anchored in the U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, to combat antisemitism now and in the future and to ensure that our campus culture will not tolerate antisemitism. To meet this evil, Penn is initiating a series of action steps to prevent, address, and respond to antisemitism.
For her part, Magill said in a personal note appended to the Action Plan that antisemitism is “pernicious and persistent,” and added, “Because hatred of one vulnerable group is so often intertwined with threats toward others, we will also vigilantly combat other forms of hate aimed at members of our community due to their background or beliefs.” She pledged:
As we move forward, we will ensure that our work is well-integrated into planning efforts for Penn’s future at the highest levels. Penn’s senior leadership will also work with School and Center leaders to encourage and support the efforts outlined above so our work is integrated into unit-level conversations and planning.
At this moment of seemingly intractable division, Penn has an obligation to do what it has done for nearly three hundred years: create knowledge, share it for good, and educate the next generation. This work demands great resilience and resolve. It calls for patience and respect—respect for ideas that differ from our own, respect for each other. Our commitment to address the scourge of antisemitism around us is where this work will begin. But it is not where it will end. If we are to move forward as a community—a Penn community—then we must stand together as a community that sees and hears all its members. That condemns hate and finds ways to respectfully debate and talk across differences. That leads with care and compassion.
This bears repeating: Magill spelled it out on Nov. 1, six weeks before she was badgered by Stefanik and members of the House Education Committee.
As committee chair, Foxx promises a formal investigation of what she characterizes as the universities’ failure “to take steps to provide Jewish students the safe learning environment they are due under law,” including “substantial document requests, and the Committee will not hesitate to utilize compulsory measures including subpoenas if a full response is not immediately forthcoming.” While she’s been in Congress nearly 20 years, she’s best known perhaps for telling a reporter to “shut up” during a recent photo op on the Capitol steps.
In her interview with Vargas of NewsNation, Foxx bristled at the idea that the committee’s questioning seemed combative. In response to a softball question, she said:
That’s what happens with liberals, and that’s what happens in postsecondary education. I told them I don’t call it higher education anymore, because they’re not teaching higher order skills. They’re not teaching critical thinking skills, and, you’re right, liberals blame everybody else for the things that they do wrong. They’ve exposed themselves in a way that frankly I’ve been trying to do for a long time.
Foxx, who likes to tout her experience in higher ed as president of of Mayland Community College in rural North Carolina, added, “I’ve been sounding the alarm on this for a long, long time, saying there is rot in the university system, and we’ve got to start paying attention to it.”
There’s no reason to doubt Foxx’ concern for the safety of the Jewish students on Ivy League campuses, but it sounds like maybe she has another agenda. And she might have said more than she intended to a softball question by a friendly interviewer. That’s been known to happen.
Nor is Foxx the only member of the committee who has a dual agenda.
Over the weekend, Nicholas Confessore of the New York Times noted that the ongoing war in Gaza and the domestic furor over allegations of antisemitism have split the Democrats in Congress. He also noted that Stefanik has her own reasons to pounce on Harvard. He wrote:
If Tuesday’s (House GOP) hearing drove a perfect wedge into the Democratic coalition, that seemed partly by design. The most intensive questioning was led by Rep. Elise Stefanik, the moderate-turned-MAGA New York Republican, who in 2021 drew criticism for campaign ads that played with “great replacement”-style themes.
Stefanik is both a graduate and critic of Harvard: Several years ago, after student complaints, Harvard removed Stefanik from the board of its Institute of Politics over her repeated false statements about the 2020 election results. She charged her alma mater with “caving to the woke left.” And last week, she exacted a measure of revenge.
Confessore’s reference to the “great replacement” theme in Stefanik’s ads stems from a white nationalist conspiracy theory claiming that “political elites are purposefully seeking to increase the number of racial minorities in an attempt to displace the white American population.” It made headlines when demonstrators chanted “Jews will not replace” us in 2017 at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., and in 2018 when 11 worshipers in Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life – Or L’Simcha Congregation were shot to death by a right-wing domestic terrorist. And Stefanik alluded to it in social media ads alleging that Democrats want to “overthrow our electorate” by admitting undocumented immigrants to the country.
Whether Stefanik’s ads were more antisemitic or partisan is arguable, but the Times of Israel has noted that in 2022, after a mass murder at a Black supermarket in Buffalo, the Anti-Defamation League blasted her for “strategically play[ing] on extremist rhetoric to stoke growing fears that white Americans are under attack and minorities seek to eject them.”
So when Stefanik grilled the Ivy League presidents on antisemitism at last week’s hearing, it was seen as a turnabout. The headline in the Israeli newspaper captures it perfectly — “‘Is that really her?’: Liberal Jews split on Stefanik after antisemitism hearings.”
Among her Jewish critics was Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., whose motives may have had a partisan tinge to them “Where does Elise Stefanik get off lecturing anybody about antisemitism,” Raskin said in a widely quoted political potshot, “when she’s the hugest supporter of Donald Trump, who traffics in antisemitism all the time?” Stefanik fired back on the social media network formerly known as Twitter, saying Trump was “the best friend Jewish people have had in the White House in modern times.”
With the dramatic, well-documented increase in antisemitism and Islamophobia since Oct. 7, the House Education Committee has something of real substance to investigate. But so far, if you’ll forgive the pun, politics has trumped substance.
Links and Citations
Jim Axelrod, “U.S. ‘moving into a dangerous phase’ as anti-Semitic incidents surge, group says,” CBS News, Jan. 26, 2021 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/anti-semitic-incidents-on-rise/.
Nicholas Confessore, “As Fury Erupts Over Campus Antisemitism, Conservatives Seize the Moment,” New York Times, Dec. 10, 2023 https://www.yahoo.com/news/fury-erupts-over-campus-antisemitism-174107952.html.
Emily Mae Czachor, “U.S. sees ‘unprecedented,’ ‘staggering’ rise in antisemitic and anti-Muslim incidents since start of Israel-Hamas war, groups say,” CBS News, Dec. 11, 2023 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/antisemitic-anti-muslim-incidents-israel-hamas-war-anti-defamation-league/.
“Foxx Announces Formal Investigation into Harvard, UPenn, and MIT,” Committee on Education and the Workforce, Dec. 7, 2023 https://edworkforce.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=409851.
Ron Kampeas, “‘Is that really her?’: Liberal Jews split on Stefanik after antisemitism hearings,” Times of Israel, Dec. 12, 2023 https://www.timesofisrael.com/is-that-really-her-liberal-jews-split-on-stefanik-after-antisemitism-hearings/.
Richard Luscombe, “University of Pennsylvania president resigns after furor over free speech and antisemitism,” Guardian, Dec. 9, 2023 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/09/university-of-pennsylvania-president-free-speech-antisemitism.
Elizabeth Magill, “Penn’s Path Forward: A Closing Message from President Magill,” in Penn’s Action Plan to Combat Antisemitism, Nov. 1, 2023 https://antisemitism-action-plan.upenn.edu/home.
Evan Mandery, “What Elise Stefanik Gets Wrong About the College Antisemitism Debate, Politico, Dec. 13, 2023 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/12/13/college-antisemitism-free-speech-academic-freedom-debate-00131402.
Penn’s Action Plan to Combat Antisemitism, Nov. 1, 2023 https://antisemitism-action-plan.upenn.edu/home.
Diane Ravitch, “The Phony ‘Culture Wars’ Are Hurting Students, Teachers, and Schools,” blog, Jan. 14, 2023 https://dianeravitch.net/2023/01/14/jan-resseger-the-concocted-culture-wars-are-hurting-students-teachers-and-schools/.
Saturday Night Live, cold open, Dec. 9, 2023 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ep-OnsDieFQ&t=298s.
“‘Shut up!’: NC congresswoman heckles reporter at GOP news conference,” Raleigh News and Observer, Oct. 25, 2023 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkxnUAtrKIc.
“Virginia Foxx on House Investigation of Elite Schools over Rampant Antisemitism,” interview by Elizabeth Varga, NewsNation, Dec. 9, 2023 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcczLSlUDAM&t=387s.
Wikipedia articles on critical race theory (CRT), Virginia Foxx, genocide, Great Replacement conspiracy theory in the United States, Hunter Biden laptop controversy, intafada, Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Liz Magill, Tree of Life – Or L’Simcha Congregation synagogue, Unite the Right rally
[Uplinked Dec. 14, 2023]
Ordinary Time 
Very good. Excellent analysis.
LikeLike