The House Committee on Education and the Workforce requested a fresh round of disciplinary documents related to recent anti-Semitic demonstrations at Columbia University. The committee's new chairman, Rep. Tim Walberg (R., Mich.), hammered the Ivy League school for its "continued failure to address the pervasive antisemitism that persists on campus."
Walberg made the request in a February 13 letter to Columbia interim president Katrina Armstrong and Columbia board of trustees co-chairs David Greenwald and Claire Shipman. He instructed them to turn over a litany of internal records related to anti-Semitic incidents that unfolded during the ongoing fall semester.
On the first day of that semester, student radicals blocked the entrance to Columbia, vandalized a statue, and clashed with police. Months later, in January, they stormed an Israeli history class and targeted Jews with anti-Semitic flyers that glorified Hamas and promised violence. Most recently, Columbia's leading anti-Semitic student group clogged campus toilets with cement and soaked a business school building with red paint, tactics the student radicals learned months earlier at an anarchist training session held at the home of a Columbia literary society.
Those incidents, Walberg wrote, demonstrate that Columbia "has failed to uphold its commitments, both because the disciplinary process has failed and because the campus administration has refused to enforce its pre-existing rules." Walberg went on to note that Columbia "receives billions in federal funding." He gave Columbia two weeks to produce "all disciplinary records" related to the aforementioned incidents and a few others, including a September protest that saw students target a class taught by former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Walberg's letter shows that, while the education committee's leadership has changed, its focus on anti-Semitism in higher education remains. During the last Congress, the committee, then led by Rep. Virginia Foxx (R., N.C.), subpoenaed Columbia after the school failed to turn over documents related to anti-Semitism. Columbia could face a similar fate should it stonewall Walberg's request, though a representative for the school said it would cooperate.
"Since assuming her role in August, Interim President Armstrong and her leadership team have taken decisive actions to address issues of antisemitism," the representative said in a statement. "Under the University’s new leadership, we have established a centralized Office of Institutional Equity to address all reports of discrimination and harassment, appointed a new Rules Administrator, and strengthened the capabilities of our Public Safety Office."
Walberg's letter comes as the Ivy League institution faces scrutiny not just from Congress but also the White House.
Earlier this month, President Donald Trump's Department of Education opened investigations into "widespread antisemitic harassment" at Columbia and four other schools. The move came shortly after Trump signed an executive order pledging to "combat anti-Semitism vigorously, using all available and appropriate legal tools, to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence."
"Too many universities have tolerated widespread antisemitic harassment and the illegal encampments that paralyzed campus life last year, driving Jewish life and religious expression underground," acting assistant secretary for civil rights Craig Trainor said in a statement announcing the investigations.
"The Department is putting universities, colleges, and K-12 schools on notice: this administration will not tolerate continued institutional indifference to the wellbeing of Jewish students on American campuses, nor will it stand by idly if universities fail to combat Jew hatred and the unlawful harassment and violence it animates."
The Biden administration launched similar probes into anti-Semitism in higher education, but it settled many of those probes without forcing the schools to admit wrongdoing or face significant punishment. Trainor said those settlements "did shamefully little to hold those institutions accountable" and pledged to take a tougher approach.