On Tuesday, we held a hearing of the House Education Committee that could change the course of higher education in America. The moral decay of our universities was exposed so vividly as to shock the conscience of the nation.
The groundwork for the hearing was set in October, when Elise Stefanik and I wrote a letter to Harvard President Claudine Gay. As the two alumni on the Education Committee, we expressed dismay at her disgraceful reluctance to condemn terrorism and anti-Semitism at our alma mater.
Yet nothing could have prepared us for the testimony that President Gay, along with her fellow Presidents at MIT and Penn, gave on Tuesday. You can watch my 5 minutes of questioning here and Elise’s questioning here. Over 100 million people have now viewed the exchanges.
The Presidents gave the most evasive and equivocating of responses to the most basic questions of right and wrong, such as neo-Nazism or calls for genocide, as they catered their answers to anti-Semitic constituencies. The cover of the NY Post summed it up: College Shame Day.
Rep. Stefanik and I have called for the resignation of Harvard’s President, while a donor to Penn withdrew a $100 million gift. Our committee is now opening a formal investigation into all three universities and others, which will include subpoenas and compulsory document requests.
As I said in a Press Conference with Speaker Mike Johnson: This is a time of reckoning for American universities. They’ve been captured by the farthest fringes of the left, too often teaching students little more than to hate one another and America. The COVID era showed how far they have departed from principles of reason and free inquiry.
Now is our chance for fundamental change in higher education. The future of our country may depend on it.