Elite Universities Failed Jewish Students ‘Utterly,’ Stefanik Tells ADL

Thursday, 6 March 2025 | The so-called “most elite” US universities have failed their Jewish students “utterly” after “the bloodiest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust,” Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), told attendees of the Anti-Defamation League’s [ADL] “Never Is Now Summit” in New York City on Monday.

“We will not and must not rest until every single hostage is returned home and Hamas terrorists are eradicated from the face of the earth,” the nominated US ambassador to the United Nations said at the event. “The world saw, in what is now the most viewed congressional testimony in history with over 1 billion views, the moral rot of America’s higher education.”

During a four-hour hearing on December 5, 2023, Stefanik questioned then-Harvard University president Claudine Gay about Jew-hatred on campus. When Stefanik asked if calling for the genocide of all Jews violated Harvard’s policies, Gay said it depended on context. (Gay later resigned as Harvard leader.)

Stefanik said at the ADL event that the House Committee on Education and the Workforce held the hearing to demand accountability but instead was “met with weak and morally bankrupt university leaders, who evaded our questions and refused to answer direct questions with direct answers.” 

Stefanik criticized ongoing Jew-hatred on campuses, citing Barnard College, where anti-Israel protesters took over an administrative building last week, demanding amnesty for two students expelled for disrupting a modern Israeli history class at Columbia University.

“On the same day that the world was mourning the murders of the Bibas babies by Hamas terrorists, pro-Hamas terrorist sympathizers took over a Barnard College campus building, spewing antisemitic and anti-Israel hate, assaulting a staff member and sending him to the hospital,” she said. 

“Meanwhile, Barnard’s leadership held off on calling in the law enforcement stationed outside instead offering up a meeting with the college president to negotiate,” she said at the ADL event. “This is not leadership.”

Stefanik said that college leaders continue to “pander” to the demands of anti-Israel protesters, while Jewish students continue to fear for their safety.

“To the Jewish students listening, do not relent or give in,” she said. “America and the force of the Trump administration are behind you, and we will not stop fighting.”

US President Donald Trump has prioritized combating Jew-hatred on college campuses and at the United Nations, according to Stefanik.

“The United Nations is indeed a deep den of antisemitism, infected with the same rampant anti-Israel and anti-American hate and moral rot that has polluted America’s higher education system,” she said. “Especially since the barbaric Hamas attacks of October 7, the UN has continuously betrayed Israel, betraying America in the process, acting as an apologist for Iran and their terrorist proxies.”

“Under President Trump, as United States ambassador to the United Nations, the days of propping up organizations that run counter to our interests are long gone,” she added. “We will no longer fund terrorism, antisemitism and anti-Israel hate.”