(USNewsBreak.com) – The Anti-Defamation League has chronicled a rise in antisemitic rhetoric for quite some time, but in January, the group reported that antisemitic incidents had more than tripled since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7. Since then, many protests have occurred across the nation, including on some college campuses, calling out antisemitism. Congress called the heads of several prominent institutions to testify about incidents on campus and what they deemed allowable, leading to a few of those leaders to step down after Congress and their own directors found their answers insufficient. Now, the House is subpoenaing Harvard for documents related to an investigation of events on campus.
The House Committee on Education and the Workforce is currently investigating antisemitism on college campuses. Although it’s investigating several universities, including Columbia, University of Pennsylvania, and MIT, it’s currently focusing its attention on Harvard. It had previously asked for all documentation related to the Ivy League school’s response to pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Committee Chair Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) said the college has continuously “fail[ed] to satisfy the committee’s requests,” a practice she called “unacceptable,” per The New York Times.
The Republican chair of the House Education and Workforce Committee has announced subpoenas against Harvard University officials over what she said was a failure to produce certain documents related to the panel's antisemitism investigation. https://t.co/QV4eiaJsiJ
— NBC News (@NBCNews) February 16, 2024
To address the situation, the committee subpoenaed Harvard officials, including Alan Garber, the interim president who took over when previous Harvard president Claudine Gay stepped down, Penny Pritzker, and N.P. Narvekar. Pritzker heads Harvard’s governing corporation, while Narvekar acts as the CEO of the university’s management company.
Harvard released a statement saying it had complied, sending over more than 3,500 documents addressing the House’s inquiry. However, Foxx said, “Quality — not quantity — is the Committee’s concern.” The chair noted “apparent omissions and questionable redactions” in the pages the committee had received. Additionally, Harvard has not included documents on two of the four priority requests the committee sent.
Harvard has until March 4 at 5 p.m. to turn over the rest of the documents the committee seeks.
Since the latest Israel-Gaza conflict kicked off, reports suggest that about 1,139 Israelis have been killed, along with nearly 29,000 Palestinians. Many critics of Israel have been calling for a ceasefire due to the massive Palestinian death toll.
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