DePaul University President Robert Manuel faced more than three hours of heated questioning from conservative members of Congress on Wednesday morning about alleged antisemitism on his Chicago campus.
The questions came from Republican members of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, several of whom have made antisemitic remarks in the past or failed to condemn anti-Jewish elements of the Trump presidency.
Congressional Democrats and some faculty and students say the Republican legislators are using antisemitism as a cover to silence criticism of Israel and advocacy in support of Palestinian human rights — and to control what is taught and said on college campuses.
“Of course there’s a problem with antisemitism. There’s a problem with Islamophobia, there’s a problem with racism, there’s a problem with sexism. This set of hearings that this committee has engaged in is not a solution to that problem,” David Cole, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Unit called as a witness by House Democrats, told the committee Wednesday. “They are not an attempt to find out what happened, but an attempt to chill protected speech.”
Cole compared the hearing to those of the House Unamerican Activities Committee during the McCarthy era, which were widely criticized for violating the First Amendment.
“We did ultimately recognize that Joe McCarthy made a mistake, and I think history will show that this committee followed and repeated that same mistake,” Cole said.
Several student groups at DePaul, located in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood, set up a large and long-running encampment on the school’s quad to protest Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. After 17 days, university leaders sent in Chicago Police officers to forcibly tear down the encampment without agreeing to any of the demonstrators’ demands.
The university is being sued by two Jewish students who police say were attacked last fall while they were showing their support for Israel. The students say DePaul failed to protect them and other Jewish and Israeli students.
At several points during Wednesday’s hearing, conservative members appeared to threaten both Manuel and the other two college presidents who were called to testify, Wendy Raymond of Haverford College in Pennsylvania and Jeffrey Armstrong of California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo.
“For anyone who doubts my commitment to fighting on these issues, no matter what side of the aisle they’re on, they can go talk to the two chairmen of the board and the one university president in Florida who no longer have their jobs because of me,” Randy Fine, a Republican congressman from Florida, told the university presidents across the witness table. “So I encourage you to keep that in mind when you answer my questions.”
Fine was one of several GOP committee members who pressed the university presidents for information on how many faculty members and students were fired, suspended or expelled as a result of Palestinian solidarity encampments or for statements made criticizing Israel.
Committee Chairman Tim Walberg, a congressman from Michigan, accused Students for Justice in Palestine of being at the center of DePaul’s “antisemitism problem.” Manuel later pushed back against the depiction that his campus is a “hotbed of antisemitism.” But Walberg asked Manuel if he would commit to permanently banning SJP from campus.
“SJP has been suspended,” Manuel said, adding that they are on probation in relation to a social media post and told Walberg he’d “be happy to report back” about the results of an upcoming hearing. .
DePaul junior and SJP member Henna Ayesh, who watched Manuel’s testimony with other Palestinian students, said she and her friends cried.
“We have publicly seen our own president, who we have been paying to protect us, submit to right wing fascist politicians and [testify] openly and proudly that he has sanctioned and silenced us as Palestinian students on campus for the sake of protecting other students,” said Ayesh, a political science major. “He could have protected freedom of speech … and [instead] he gave into Trump’s agenda. He gave into exactly what that committee wanted to hear.”
Ayesh said she found it almost comical that the committee repeatedly asked the presidents if they had suspended student activists.
“It’s really funny that they keep throwing that threat in the air,” she said. “Us Palestinian students, we’re witnessing our family die in front of us. I feel like, for a lot of us here, there’s nothing more that we can lose.”
In a statement, the Anti-Defamation League Midwest said they welcomed Manuel’s testimony and the steps taken at DePaul “to address discrimination toward Jewish students, faculty and staff on campus.”
“Investments in security, instituting an anti-masking policy, and establishing a task force on Jewish life on campus are important and positive developments that should be acknowledged and applauded,” the statement said.
Democrats on the committee used their time to decry the Trump Administration’s decimation of the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, the main federal agency responsible for ensuring that universities appropriately respond to discrimination – and to call out the Republican’s spotty track record with regards to antisemitism.
“When white supremacists marched in Charlottesville with burning tiki torches chanting, ‘Jews will not replace us,’ President Trump said, ‘There were fine people on both sides,’ and I don’t recall the Republican majority calling that out,” said Suzanne Bonamici, Democratic Congresswoman from Oregon.
“As a mother who raised her children in a Jewish home and as an active member of my synagogue for more than 25 years, I can no longer pretend that this is a good faith effort to root out antisemitism,” Bonamici said of the hearing, the eighth held on alleged antisemitism on college campuses. “Especially when the Trump administration and the majority party are regularly undermining Jewish values, including justice, loving kindness, free speech, freedom of religion and the Jewish responsibility of tikkun olam: to repair the world.”
Democratic Congressman from Texas Gregorio Casar attempted to question his fellow Republican committee members instead of the university presidents. He asked them to raise their hands if they condemn President Trump’s statement following the white nationalist march in Charlottesville – and condemn Trump’s pardoning of a Jan. 6 rioter who praised Adolf Hitler and called for the killing of more Jews.
None of the GOP legislators appeared to raise their hands.