WASHINGTON — Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) has revealed she’s publishing a book exposing the “far-left indoctrination, division, and moral rot” at Ivy League universities, as she draws a direct line from elite campus culture to the rise of Zohran Mamdani.
Stefanik told The Post in an exclusive interview that her insider’s account, “Poisoned Ivies,” will raise the curtain on the decline of American higher education — but she noted it would also be “newsier than ever, given the administration’s decision to, correctly, withhold billions of dollars of funding” from the schools and the upcoming New York City mayoral election.
“If you look at the rise of an antisemite socialist, Zohran Mamdani, you cannot have that without a direct line from these poisoned Ivy League schools,” she went on, “leading directly to this moral rot that is currently manifesting in what’s playing out in the mayor’s race in New York City.”
Mamdani, who could be elected the Big Apple’s first Muslim mayor next week, graduated from Bowdoin College in Maine and his father teaches at Columbia University. He’s tapped into support from the far-left that has permeated on college campuses.
Stefanik who grilled Ivy League campus presidents in 2023 on the explosion of antisemitic harassment and intimidation on their campuses — and eventually sparked the resignation of their presidents — said the problems persist.
“Antisemitism on college campuses is the canary in the coal mine of academic and moral rot that has been happening for decades,” said Stefanik, a Harvard University alum.
“Whether it’s the tenured faculty, whether it’s the bloated tuition, whether it’s the curricula, whether it’s the foreign funding, the percentage of foreign students, the book really goes through all aspects of what I believe has been moving higher education in the wrong direction that really culminated in this explosion of antisemitism on college campuses.”
Stefanik also said: “This is an important chapter in the history of American education to tell in one book of just the really sick situation that was occurring on these campuses, whether it was the assaults of Jewish students, whether it was the chants of ‘Death to Israel,’ ‘Death to America’ and the faculty and administration’s inability to show any moral compass and any strong leadership.”
The Upstate congresswoman added that she has been drafting the book for several years after her “hearing heard around the world” of Harvard University President Claudine Gay, MIT President Sally Kornbluth and University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill racked up billions of views online.
In the Dec. 5, 2023, grilling, Stefanik demanded to know whether anti-Israel demonstrators “calling for the genocide of Jews” violated campus policies — and none of the presidents definitively stated that it ran afoul of student codes of conduct.
Gay, who was also facing a plagiarism scandal, and Magill resigned shortly after, setting off an “earthquake” in American higher education, Stefanik said.
A 2022 Harvard Crimson survey found that 45% of its faculty self-identified as “very liberal,” while 37% said they were “liberal,” 16% said they were “moderate” and just 1.46% identified as “conservative.” None went for the “very conservative” moniker.
“If you look at the matriculation rates, they have increased significantly with some of the public higher ed[ucation] institutions down south, whether it’s University of Georgia, University of Florida,” she added, “You’re also seeing new startup education institutions like the University at Austin, which literally was birthed out of the failures of traditional higher ed.”
Free Press and CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss — who resigned from the New York Times in 2020 — was one of several cofounders for the Austin-based school committed to “open inquiry and civil discourse.”
In the latter part of the book, Stefanik said she would address remedies for much of that rot as well as plans to ban foreign funding of US colleges and universities and root out Diversity, Equity and Inclusion litmus tests from admissions and faculty hiring.
“These schools are not entitled to taxpayer funds if they are promoting anti-American ideals that are not representative of the morals of the American people,” she said. “Why are we allowing foreign adversaries to fund programs on these campuses?”
The Trump administration earlier this year, for example, launched a probe of the University of California, Berkeley, over $220 million in payments from the Chinese government for a joint institute of learning.
Columbia University and others have also entered into hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth in agreements seeking to protect Jewish students and curb DEI policies — but there’s more work to be done, according to Stefanik.
“That is a very important first step, and only President Trump would have been capable of doing that,” she said. “This didn’t happen overnight, and it’s not going to be a quick fix. … This is going to take decades of effort,” involving coordination with Congress but “also a cultural shift … a significant shift in academia.”
Asked about how to halt efforts by schools to ignore federal laws and policies already banning DEI, Stefanik said her office “found that “exposing this for the public — that is a very powerful tool.”
But “we need to use the ability of the billions of dollars of taxpayer funds. That is the only way these schools will fix themselves, plus the public exposure,” she said.
Though she hasn’t decided yet whether to enter the 2026 New York governor’s race, Stefanik noted the issue of protecting students’ rights on campus and providing oversight of top universities will “be one of many” topics she tackles in the next year while serving in Congress.
“We’re going to continue to be the congressional office that leads on this issue,” she vowed.
“Poisoned Ivies: The Inside Account of the Academic and Moral Rot at America’s Elite Universities,” will be released by publisher Threshold Editions on April 7, 2026.
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