Chip Roy Calls Out Harvard For 'Getting Billions Of Dollars Of Taxpayer Funds' Amidst Antisemitism

4 months ago

At a House Judiciary Committee hearing last week, Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) spoke about antisemitism on college campuses.

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Transcript

00:00Thank you, Mr. Racklin, and I will now recognize myself under the five-minute rule for questions.

00:10Mr. Kestenbaum, you wrote on March 5th in Newsweek a

00:15fairly detailed outline of what you've been facing at Harvard, and

00:20I wanted to give you the opportunity to be able to express some of that,

00:22but let me just read for the record, then you can expand on it if you want,

00:26where you talked about being shocked to learn that Harvard

00:30permits the Palestine Solidarity Committee and other groups to hold an annual Israeli Apartheid Week, funded with Harvard money,

00:37designed to fund student initiatives, as you laid out in the lawsuit. During these events, student activists were built what they called apartheid walls, meant to criticize

00:45Israel's efforts to prevent terrorist attacks, plastered Harvard Yard with imagery designed to compare Israel to the Nazis, and

00:51have invited more anti-semitic speakers to infect Harvard's community.

00:55After that week, a swastika was found in the undergraduate courier house, correct?

00:59Yep.

01:00Since October 7th, anti-semitism on campus has multiplied exponentially, you wrote, on my way to class,

01:04this is your words, people direct a chance at me to, quote,

01:08globalize the Intifada,

01:10to kill all Jews in the world, or to free Palestine from the river to the sea, to annihilate the only Jewish state and its

01:15Jewish inhabitants, including my family, your family.

01:19You might expect that, as you wrote, that Harvard Divinity School, with its mission emphasizing, quote, diversity, inclusion, belonging, and with religious tolerance,

01:26the Divinity School, I want to be clear,

01:28one of its core tenets would be a safe place for Jews. As you wrote, Harvard Divinity,

01:33however, has, as my lawsuit alleges, proven to be a fount of anti-Jewish sentiment and discrimination.

01:38Does this reflect what you're currently finding in your experience at Harvard, and do you think it reflects the experience of most

01:45Jewish students currently at universities across the country, particularly Ivy League universities?

01:50It absolutely reflects my experience, and I would actually argue it's only gotten worse.

01:55I'll give you one quick anecdote. Marla Frederick, who's the dean of Harvard Divinity School, who I'm sure is watching right now,

02:00I have emailed her more than 40 times to talk about anti-semitism. She has not responded once to a single one of my emails.

02:06She's refused to meet with me.

02:07She's refused to acknowledge that anti-semitism is a problem at Harvard Divinity School and at Harvard University more broadly.

02:12I'll make one last point. We invited, two months ago, a popular Israeli musician, Yishai Rebo, to come sing songs to Jewish students

02:19who've been experiencing anti-semitism. There was such a vicious boycott and protest where they chanted

02:24Globalize the Intifada, Resistance is Justified, that we had to hire outside security. When I asked Harvard DEI to, at minimum,

02:31condemn the fact that Harvard students have made it so unsafe for Jews to sing songs that we needed to have security,

02:36they said, this does not fall under our purview.

02:39This is the same Harvard DEI that commented on George Floyd, on abortion, on Russia's invasion of Ukraine. When it comes to protecting Jewish students, nothing.

02:46So, and to be clear, this is a Harvard that has a $50 billion endowment, correct?

02:50That is still getting billions of dollars of taxpayer funds.

02:52I just want to be very clear. We're talking about the money and the need for resources.

02:55The problem here is the secular left in control of universities that are perpetuating the kind of stuff that you just described.

03:01And I just wondered, I want to investigate the point here to the extent to which this has been coordinated.

03:07The extent to which this is coordinated across campuses, across this university, I mean across this country.

03:12Rabbi, I believe you're familiar with some of the observations and actually some information about the extent to which this has been very clearly

03:19organized and coordinated, campus by campus, around the country.

03:23Sure, Chairman. Somebody is buying all of those matching tents.

03:27And I believe, and I believe strongly enough, that along with my partners at Greenberg, Traurig, Holtzman, Vogel, and the Schoen Law Firm,

03:33we filed a federal lawsuit in the Eastern District of Virginia accusing some of those coordinators of working directly with Hamas.

03:39And we'll let our filings speak for ourselves.

03:41I know that Congress is now looking into some of that funding, but it goes beyond funding.

03:45It goes beyond coordinating.

03:46When someone tells you that they are trying to provide material support to Hamas, it behooves us to believe them.

03:52And I'll tell you why I think it's so important to trace that funding.

03:55It's because if you ever walk into one of those protests, which I have done, you'll notice something fascinating.

04:00Eighty percent of the people there don't know what river and what sea.

04:03Some are there for the pizza.

04:04Some are there because they have been genuinely misled into thinking that they are on the right side of history.

04:09And if we can actually prove who's behind this, I think we can save 80 percent of our future citizens.

04:14And on this point about the universities fomenting this, there are some universities that have not.

04:18There are some universities that have stood up.

04:19I would I would ask if you think there are some good examples.

04:22For example, my friend Ben Sasse, the president of the University of Florida, who basically said this is not a daycare.

04:26You know the rules. Follow the rules.

04:28And Florida then did it the right way.

04:30Or, for example, the University of Texas, where Jay Hartzell said, we're not going to do this.

04:33Would you guys agree that there is a way to do this at campuses?

04:36You can have free speech.

04:37You can be able to say what you believe, but not terrorize and harass Jewish students.

04:42Do you guys agree with that? Yes or no?

04:44Yes. Yes. Yes.

04:46Last question. I'm running out of time, particularly to the two students.

04:49Could you guys expand a little bit on the extent to which this is not just anti-Semitism, but anti-Americanism?

04:55I'm going to go to you first, Mr. Yacobi.

04:57I'd ask the two students to answer my question.

05:01I just want to reference one professor who, on a Twitter account,

05:05which criticized Sami al-Aryan, who was deported for terrorism,

05:10and it commented on how he visited a campus.

05:13A professor then retweeted it, saying that this is the time to say that I have a longstanding respect for Sami al-Aryan.

05:22That is a terrorist that was deported from the United States.

05:25And a professor at Penn then said that she has a longstanding respect for him in response to that tweet.

05:31Within 24 hours of installing two American flags at Harvard Divinity School,

05:36they were vandalized three separate times.

05:38The flagpole was ripped in half.

05:39The flags were tossed across the ground.

05:41This is not just about anti-Semitism, and it's not just about Jew hatred,

05:44but it's hating the United States.

05:46It's hating our democracy and hating Western values.

05:49Thank you, Mr. Kestenbaum.

05:50I will now recognize the gentleman.

Chip Roy Calls Out Harvard For 'Getting Billions Of Dollars Of Taxpayer Funds' Amidst Antisemitism

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