House Republicans on Tuesday grilled the leaders of Georgetown University, the City University of New York and the University of California, Berkeley in the latest hearing on antisemitism in higher education, accusing the schools of failing to respond adequately to allegations of bias or discrimination.
In their appearance before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, the three university leaders said that they had taken disciplinary action where appropriate and stressed the importance of protecting free speech.
UC Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons pushed back on the suggestion that antisemitism was more present on college campuses than anywhere else.
"If somebody is expressing pro-Palestinian beliefs, that's not necessarily antisemitic," he said.
The hearing was the ninth in a series Republicans have held to scrutinize university leadership over allegations of antisemitism on campuses after a wave of protests following Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023 attacks on Israel. Widely criticized testimony before the committee by the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University in 2023 contributed to their resignations.