House Committee on Education and Workforce hearing with Georgetown University Interim President Robert Groves, City University of New York Chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez, University of California, Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons, and Matt Nosanchuk, former deputy assistant secretary in the Ddepartment of Eeducation’s office for civil rights on July 15. Photo by Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg via Getty Images
By Jacob Kornbluh
July 15, 2025
House Republicans on Tuesday clashed with university leaders over their handling of campus antisemitism and faculty conduct. Democrats, in turn, accused the GOP of weaponizing antisemitism and ignoring the Trump administration’s hiring of officials with antisemitic ties.
A former Biden administration official who oversaw civil rights investigations at the Department of Education, who left the role in January, also testified that recent actions under the Trump administration have made campuses less safe for Jewish students.
Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, a Democrat from Oregon who is Jewish, used most of her five minutes of questioning to highlight what she described as Republican hypocrisy on antisemitism. “If the majority wanted to fight antisemitism and protect Jewish students, they should condemn antisemitism in their own party and at the highest level of government,” Bonamici said, citing a litany of Trump administration officials with ties to antisemitic rhetoric. “They have failed to do so.”
Among others, she pointed to Kingsley Wilson, the deputy press secretary at the Pentagon, who posted Nazi slogans on her personal social media accounts and promoted the antisemitic great replacement conspiracy, and Leo Terrell, head of the Trump administration’s task force on antisemitism, who shared an antisemitic post from the former leader of an organization that promoted the “Nazification of America.”
Bonamici also mentioned President Donald Trump’s recent remarks describing some bankers as “Shylocks,” a reference to the villainous Jewish moneylender in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. Trump said later he did not realize it was antisemitic.
“Have any Republican colleagues here today condemned these acts of antisemitism from the president and members of the administration or called for the removal of these individuals from office?” she asked rhetorically. “No, because that would require real and meaningful commitment to rooting out antisemitism from the top down. Instead, my colleagues are weaponizing the real problems of the Jewish community, a community I am an active member of, in furtherance of their attacks on and plans to defund colleges and universities.”
She ended her remarks by saying, “Jewish Americans deserve better.”
The hearing, held by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, featured testimony from Georgetown University Interim President Robert Groves, City University of New York Chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez and University of California, Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons. Matt Nosanchuk, the previous deputy assistant secretary in the Department of Education’s office for civil rights, also appeared on the panel.
Nosanchuk, who also served as the White House Jewish Liaison under President Barack Obama, warned that the Trump administration’s hollowing out of staff at the office for civil rights and the shuttering of key regional offices left the agency ill-equipped to investigate campus antisemitism. “Based on everything I’m hearing from Jewish students,” he said, “it’s making campuses less safe.”
Republicans’ grilling of university leaders
In a replay of the grilling other university leaders have faced at House hearings since the war in Gaza began, Republican members confronted the leaders of CUNY and Georgetown over faculty speech and student incidents that they said went unpunished.
Rep. Virginia Foxx from North Carolina pressed Georgetown’s Groves about a tweet from Professor Jonathan Brown in June that appeared to support an Iranian strike on a U.S. base.
Groves said Georgetown responded within minutes, placing Brown on leave and removing him as chair of the Alwaleed bin Talal Chair of Islamic Civilization in the School of Foreign Service. “We condemned the tweet immediately,” Groves said. “He’s on leave, and we’re beginning a process of reviewing the case.”
Groves also faced further scrutiny over Georgetown’s handling of other cases, including the distribution of mock eviction notices on Jewish students’ dorm rooms in 2024 and inflammatory social media posts by faculty affiliated with the Bridge Initiative, a multi-year research project on Islamophobia. One such post compared Israeli actions in Gaza to Auschwitz.
“I reject those kinds of statements,” Groves said. “That’s not the policy of Georgetown.” He expressed regret and apologized to Jewish students and staff, but also acknowledged that the university did not discipline the staffer who posted the Auschwitz comparison because of their First Amendment rights.
CUNY’s Rodríguez, who has come under fire in past hearings over his school’s handling of antisemitism, said the university is committed to protecting Jewish students while upholding freedom of speech. “We continue to educate and respond quickly when violations occur,” he said.
Rep. Elise Stefanik, who earned plaudits in the pro-Israel community for challenging university presidents in past hearings, accused Rodríguez of failing to address the “heinous scourge of antisemitism on your watch as chancellor.”
Rodríguez acknowledged that CUNY is “not immune from antisemitism.” In 2024, he said, CUNY received 68 complaints related to antisemitism, and 16 such complaints have been filed so far this year. Over the past two years, CUNY has disciplined 18 students for antisemitic conduct and 25 students for inappropriate behavior during protests or rallies.
He also condemned the “globalize the Intifada” slogan that has been a flashpoint in the current mayoral race in New York City, home to the largest concentration of Jews in America. “Any call to violence against Jewish members of our community is antisemitic and against our policies,” Rodríguez said.
