Can Congress Do Something About the Unrest on College Campuses?

Antisemitism has risen across the nation, but it is most noticeable on college campuses since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023. The massacre of Jews – mostly civilians – ended with more than 1,200 people being killed and more than 100 taken hostage. How did students and professors on America’s campuses react to the terrible news? They cheered the terrorists! Suzanne Bates reported on the events in an article published in The Deseret News. 

“In nearly 50 years of @Harvard affiliation, I have never been as disillusioned and alienated as I am today,” former Harvard President Lawrence Summers wrote on X on Oct. 9. “The silence from Harvard’s leadership, so far, coupled with vocal and widely reported student groups’ statement blaming Israel solely, has allowed Harvard to appear at best neutral towards acts of terror against the Jewish state of Israel.”

The U.S. House of Representatives and/or the U.S. Senate have passed several resolutions condemning the Hamas attacks (412-10 vote) and/or “condemning Hamas for sexual violence, calling on Hamas to release hostages, and condemning antisemitism on college campuses.”

Representative Burgess Owens (R-UT) “has spoken out repeatedly about the rise in antisemitism” both publicly and in committee hearings in the House with another hearing scheduled for tomorrow. Bates reported on an interview that Owens had with the Deseret News today when he said the following.

“We need to continue to let people know that what we’re up against is not just something that happened on Oct. 7. We have administrators, we have people in DEI offices, and indoctrination of divisiveness and hatred. We have allowed them to come into our college campuses, and increase what it costs to go to college,” he said.

Owens said he doesn’t think things will change until the American people “educate themselves” on what is going on, and he thinks Republicans in the House, by shining a light on the issue, are doing their part to increase understanding of the issue….

Owens said he thinks Congress should withhold funds from college campuses that allow antisemitism and other bigotry to fester. But while legislation along those lines may pass the Republican-controlled House, it is unlikely to clear the Democratic-controlled Senate or White House….

“We are at a time now where we understand our education is at risk,” he said.

Americans are losing trust in universities after witnessing the protests on campuses, he said.

“We’ve got to end this, taxpayer dollars shouldn’t pay for that kind of craziness,” he said of DEI programs, which he said also teach Black Americans to hate white Americans. “I have seen it. But we just call it teaching – one race to hate another, not matter what race, what religion. That’s not the American way.”

Owens criticized the student protests of the war in Gaza. He said that the “vandalism associated with student encampments on campus shows they “feel entitled, they don’t understand respect for other people’s property.” He concluded, “And this is where it’s up to us to make sure that we’re teaching accountability.”