New York
A general rule about congressional hearings: The most contentious ones, the ones that make the evening news and show up on social media, bear no consequences. They’re mostly performances for the cameras and affect policy not at all.
One astonishing counterexample occurred on Dec. 5, 2023, in a hearing of the U.S. House Education and Workforce Committee. The subject was antisemitism at American universities, especially the disorder and violence perpetrated by students and outside agitators on elite campuses in the weeks after the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023. Three university presidents testified before the committee—Claudine Gay of Harvard, Liz Magill of the University of Pennsylvania and Sally Kornbluth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. All three embarrassed themselves and their institutions by their inability to answer a simple question put to them by Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York: Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate your university’s code of conduct?
In a book to be published Tuesday, “Poisoned Ivies,” Ms. Stefanik recalls formulating the question only after the three presidents had spent hours offering evasive, noncommittal answers. By the time she asked the question, first to Ms. Gay, the hearing room was almost empty, members of the news media gone.
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