Rep. Virginia Foxx, North Carolina Republican, isn’t finished with her mission to ferret out campus antisemitism at U.S. universities.
The Education and the Workforce Committee chairwoman has expanded her probe to include Rutgers University, saying she has “grave concerns regarding the inadequacy of Rutgers’ response to antisemitism on its campuses.”
“Rutgers stands out for the intensity and pervasiveness of antisemitism on its campuses,” said Ms. Foxx in her Wednesday letter. “Rutgers senior administrators, faculty, staff, academic departments and centers, and student organizations have contributed to the development of a pervasive climate of antisemitism.”
She cited the New Jersey public university‘s Newark campus, which houses the Center for Security, Race and Rights, saying it has become “notorious as a hotbed of radical antisemitic, anti-American, anti-Israel, and pro-terrorist activity.”
The letter cited a local news report that said the center’s director, Sahar Aziz, has “reposted antisemitic propaganda claiming that ‘there [are] no rapes or ‘beheaded babies’! Israel & its MSM accomplices are making up so many outrageous lies to distract from its carnage in Gaza!’”
After the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israeli civilians, Ms. Aziz joined more than 100 Rutgers faculty members signing a letter condemning “Israel’s military assault against the Palestinian people” and describing themselves as “in awe of the Palestinian struggle to resist violent occupation.”
Days after the Oct. 7 attack, the center hosted a webinar entitled “Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine,” during which a faculty affiliate blamed “Zionists” for the assault, declaring that “Zionist settler colonialism is a structure that is the provocation.”
The center sponsored a forum on the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack that featured “pro-terrorism speakers including Sami Al-Arian, a former University of South Florida professor who pled guilty and was convicted of providing material support to the designated terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad,” the letter said.
Senate Republicans opened an investigation into the center in February, prompting the Rutgers AAUP-AFT, the academic union, to stand behind “Professor Aziz’s exercise of free speech and academic freedom.”
The union also defended the center’s free-speech rights “even as we recognize the robust disagreement within our own membership about some views and arguments presented at the Center.”
Rutgers suspended the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter on its Brunswick campus in December after repeated disruptions, but lifted the interim suspension a month later. The organization was placed on a one-year probation.
Weeks later, the organization held a divestment rally at which students chanted, “We don’t want Zionists here” and “There is one solution: intifada revolution.”
A Rutgers spokesperson condemned antisemitism after the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation into the university in December.
“Rutgers stands against antisemitism and against hate in all its pernicious forms,” said spokesperson Dory Devlin. “The university strives to be a safe and supportive environment for all our students, faculty, and staff.”
Ms. Foxx requested all reports of antisemitic incidents and disciplinary processes and procedures, as well as a list of foreign donations and funding by country, since Jan. 1, 2021. The deadline for submitting the requested information is April 10.
Since January, her committee has opened antisemitism investigations into some of the nation’s most prestigious colleges, including Harvard, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of California Berkeley, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Columbia officials are scheduled to testify before the committee at its April 17 hearing entitled “Columbia in Crisis: Columbia University’s Response to Antisemitism.”
