The heads of three universities will appear before Congress on Tuesday, becoming the latest batch of leaders who Republicans have called to Washington over allegations of campus antisemitism.
In a hearing before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, leaders from the City University of New York, Georgetown University and the University of California, Berkeley, will testify about “the role of faculty, funding and ideology” in antisemitism.
The first hearings targeted Ivy League universities, but Republicans have widened their lens to other kinds of institutions, which they say also failed to keep Jewish students safe when pro-Palestinian protests swept campuses around the country.
While the protests have died down substantially since last year, Tim Walberg, a Michigan Republican and the committee’s chair, said in a statement that lawmakers “continue to see antisemitic hatred festering at schools across the country.”
Mr. Walberg echoed President Trump, who campaigned on punishing universities that he said had not done enough to curb antisemitism. The Trump administration has taken away major sums of money — billions in Harvard’s case — from top universities. A federal task force on antisemitism has singled out many institutions for investigation, and federal agents have detained international students who were involved in pro-Palestinian activism.
The Republican-led hearings began before the second Trump administration, months after Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023, which led to Israel’s ongoing invasion of Gaza. The presidents of M.I.T., Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania were called in for the first hearing, which turned into a disastrous spectacle for the leaders.
Critics of the Republican efforts say the hearings are not sincere efforts to protect Jewish students, but are instead designed to silence speech that supporters of Israel do not like. Republicans, they say, are using accusations of antisemitism as a cudgel in their long-running attack on higher education.
Todd Wolfson, the president of the American Association of University Professors, a faculty rights group, called the idea that professors are fomenting antisemitism “preposterous” and likened the university hearings to “show trials” that have a chilling effect on academic freedom.
“I have faculty saying to me, ‘Two years ago I published something on the Middle East — am I going to get fired?’” Dr. Wolfson, who is Jewish, said in an interview.
The three universities at Tuesday’s hearing have all had pro-Palestinian activism on their campuses.
Berkeley is the site where Students for Justice in Palestine, a student activist group, was founded in the early 1990s. In 2024, pro-Palestinian demonstrators erected scores of tents on the campus, and an event featuring an Israeli speaker was canceled after protesters smashed doors. The chancellor at the time called it “an attack on the fundamental values of the university.” After the incidents, the House committee demanded documents about Berkeley’s response to antisemitism.
At CUNY, one of the nation’s largest public university systems, with nearly 240,000 students and 26 colleges, the law school, in particular, is known for the outspoken pro-Palestinian activists among its graduates. Protests at CUNY campuses in 2024 also led to mass arrests. After an investigation, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights said last year that the university had mishandled a number of complaints of antisemitism and other forms of bias since 2019.
The third university represented at Tuesday’s hearing, Georgetown, has vocally opposed the Trump administration’s moves against colleges.
In March, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia threatened to bar Georgetown graduates from federal jobs because of the university’s diversity programming. The law school dean called the threat unconstitutional in a strongly worded response.
Shortly after, the Trump administration arrested a Georgetown postdoctoral fellow from India, Badar Khan Suri, saying he was “spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media.” He spent two months in a Texas immigration facility before a federal judge ordered him released. The judge said that he had been arrested “for punitive reasons” in violation of the First Amendment.
There may be little upside to testifying before Congress, but declining a request to appear also poses a significant risk. Lawmakers can issue subpoenas compelling university leaders to testify. And appearing intransigent could prompt more scrutiny.
The leaders of the universities are expected to defend their efforts to improve conditions for Jewish students. Some have opposed calls to boycott Israel and created stricter protest policies. They are hoping to avoid the types of viral moments from the first two hearings.
The first hearing, in December 2023, is remembered for a particularly explosive exchange. Representative Elise Stefanik asked whether the three presidents would punish students if they called for the genocide of Jews. Claudine Gay of Harvard and Liz Magill of the University of Pennsylvania both were widely panned for saying their responses would depend on the context. Both resigned within a month.
The next hearing, four months later, was also consequential. Nemat Shafik, the president of Columbia University, took a different and more aggressive stance against pro-Palestinian students and faculty members on her campus. She denounced professors by name and revealed disciplinary details, angering some members of the university community. She eventually stepped down from the job.
At later hearings, leaders from Rutgers University, the University of California, Los Angeles, and other institutions managed to avoid the same pitfalls. They condemned episodes of campus antisemitism but also spoke of the challenges of balancing student safety with free speech, especially at public universities.
Several institutions have already made changes.
CUNY, for example, has been centralizing its discrimination and harassment processes under a single office and improving its online portal for filing bias complaints. The university has also increased anti-hate training and deployed more safety officers across campuses.
Vimal Patel writes about higher education with a focus on speech and campus culture.
Sharon Otterman is a Times reporter covering higher education, public health and other issues facing New York City.
Alan Blinder is a national correspondent for The Times, covering education.
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