The hearings, which most recently featured Columbia’s Nemat (Minouche) Shafik, are a game that witnesses simply cannot win. Stefanik and her colleagues control the microphones and have learned well from infamous predecessors such as Joseph McCarthy, as well as from the Fox News hosts who perfected the art of the ambush interview (especially Bill O’Reilly). The technique is very simple, and very effective. They start with an accusation dressed up as a question, such as: Does your university have a serious antisemitism problem? If you answer no, they pull out a sheaf of material purporting to demonstrate the opposite and call you a liar. If you try to answer with even the thinnest shade of nuance or complication, the result is worse: They pull out the same sheaf of material and call you a cowardly, quibbling, evasive liar. If you were to try to challenge them — “How dare someone in thrall to Donald Trump lecture me about racism and antisemitism?” — they would simply cut off your microphone, yell at you, and accuse you of dodging the question. The only answer they will accept is agreement and submission.
This is only the beginning. All right, they say, you have admitted the problem, defined as we choose to define it. What are you going to do about it? Are you going to fire or punish professors who have said things we define as antisemitic? Are you going to suspend or expel students who say such things? The hapless witnesses can only choose between capitulation and the appearance of guilt and evasion. Either way they lose.
And losing is the point of the exercise. Stefanik and her Republican colleagues do not have any real interest in solving campus problems. Their goal is to expose liberal elites as corrupt, dangerous, and anti-American — and to paint themselves as heroes capable of bludgeoning these nefarious enemies into submission.
When Presidents Claudine Gay of Harvard, Liz Magill of the University of Pennsylvania, and Sally Kornbluth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology appeared in December before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, they tried to go down the path of nuance and complexity, guided by legal counsel. The result was a public-relations disaster, followed not long after by Magill and Gay’s resignations. It was widely agreed that the three institutions had suffered serious damage. That damage, however, was not as great as that which Columbia has now suffered. In retrospect, the three presidents’ decision to address issues that are genuinely complex in a complex and nuanced fashion — at the possible cost of their careers — looks admirable.
When Shafik appeared last week before the same committee, she was determined not to repeat her colleagues’ mistakes. She knew that many onlookers — including powerful alumni and donors — believed Columbia had experienced a wave of antisemitism since October 7, and she did not want to give the impression that she had failed to take the issue seriously. But in trying to avoid one trap, she fell into another. Naturally, she hoped to explain her position in her own terms. But under the conditions of the hearings, she simply could not do so. Again and again, over several hours of brutal questioning, the Republicans essentially browbeat her into accepting their terms, their definitions. Rep. Lisa McClain of Michigan asked her: Is the phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” antisemitic? Shafik replied: “When I hear those terms, I find them very upsetting.” McClain kept pressing for a yes or no answer, and Shafik bent: “I hear them as such, some people don’t.” McClain pushed further, and finally Shafik indicated her agreement.
Stefanik and others hounded Shafik on statements by specific faculty members, asking whether Columbia had pursued disciplinary action against them. Joseph Massad had praised the “innovative Palestinian resistance” after the October 7 massacre carried out by Hamas. Katherine Franke allegedly stated (according to Stefanik) that “all Israeli students who have served in the IDF are dangerous and shouldn’t be on campus.” Shafik replied that the university was investigating both professors. She said that Massad had been removed from a leadership position, and that she had told Franke to consider publicly apologizing for her remark. A Democratic congresswoman got into the game, pressing Shafik to implement a three-point program to combat antisemitism.
It was an extraordinary spectacle: a university president seemingly making executive decisions on the fly, accepting the representatives’ recommendations on how to deal with complex and difficult issues on her campus, only occasionally questioning their presentation of the facts. (Franke has asserted that she was misquoted on the issue of the Israeli students). Immediately after the hearings, Stefanik’s office issued a news release, aimed at Massad: “Stefanik Secures Columbia University President’s Commitment to Remove Antisemitic Professor from Leadership Role.” Not that Stefanik gave Shafik any credit. Another news release put the lawmaker’s ulterior motives on full display: “Today’s hearing of Columbia University president and board members epitomizes the failed leadership on ‘elite’ college campuses to combat antisemitism and protect Jewish students.” Stefanik accused Shafik of “moral equivocation on antisemitism” and “glaringly inconsistent testimony” and concluded: “Columbia is in for a reckoning of accountability. If it takes a member of Congress to force a university president to fire a pro-terrorist, antisemitic faculty chair, then Columbia University leadership is failing Jewish students and its academic mission.”
The very next day, after Columbia students started a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” pitching tents on the main campus and pledging not to leave until the university had divested from firms doing business with Israel, Shafik cracked down quickly and hard. She asked the New York City police to enter campus and arrest students. Over 100 were taken into custody. One reported being confined by zip ties for over seven hours. It was hard not to see a connection to the hearings. An unknown number of these students have received suspension notices, with orders to clear out their dorm rooms and leave campus. (In the hearings, Virginia Foxx, Republican of North Carolina, attacked Shafik for relying on overly lenient warning letters.) Previous Columbia administrations had taken a much less confrontational line on similar protests (notably in the 1980s, when students started an encampment to press for divestment from South Africa). But having been pushed by Stefanik and her colleagues into taking a hard line — their hard line — on pro-Palestinian activism, Shafik now clearly felt she had no choice. (Nonetheless, Stefanik has demanded her resignation).
You may think that Stefanik is right about the extent of campus antisemitism, both in general and at Columbia. Even so, you should not applaud the events of the past week. It is not her role to say what the academic mission of a university should be — nor is it her role to prescribe disciplinary action against professors or to devise rules for acceptable campus speech. The House Committee on Education and the Workforce defines its jurisdiction much more narrowly. But even if you believe that Congress has a legitimate role in overseeing the issues covered in the hearings, that legitimacy still depends on the good faith of the committee members. Stefanik and her colleagues have been acting in transparently bad faith, with entirely obvious ulterior motives. Their attempts to exercise more influence over higher education, which has proved so unfortunately successful in the case of Columbia, should be resisted at every turn.
