House Republicans sparked the fight against campus antisemitism— let’s expand their majority

Those who are fighting the rise of antisemitism in America owe a debt of gratitude to the US House of Representatives and its slim Republican majority.

The moral rot in higher education was exposed to the world in December in an unlikely venue: a special hearing of the little-known House Committee on Education and the Workforce, called by committee chair Virginia Foxx (R-NC).

That’s when Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) posed what should have been a simple question to the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and MIT — “Yes or no: Calling for the genocide of Jews does not constitute bullying and harassment?”

None of the three could provide a clear and direct answer — and the outrageous exchange went viral, drawing widespread condemnation.

Two of the college presidents soon resigned, and Speaker Mike Johnson launched further investigations as part of a House-wide effort to combat antisemitism in the United States. 

This important work proceeded for one reason, and one reason only: Because House Republicans decided to make it a priority.

The opposite is true in the Democrat-led Senate, where Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, his committee chairs and his colleagues have steadfastly refused to hold any hearings exclusively focused on antisemitism. 

Last month, in fact, a halfhearted effort chaired by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) ended up “all lives mattering” the issue — and devolved into a shouting match as audience members hurled vile insults and curses at Jews in the hearing room. 

For me and many others, this is personal.

My Jewish family lives in the Philadelphia suburbs, in a deep blue township within a blue county in Pennsylvania, arguably the most critical swing state of this election season. 

Our township is home to tens of thousands of high-earning, left-leaning, self-described progressives who have largely voted Democrat over the past 25 years. 

And many of them are both concerned and frightened by the Democratic Party’s passive response to the rampant antisemitism we’ve seen this past year.

I’ve been volunteering 20 to 30 hours a week in my community door-knocking and campaigning for former President Donald Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance — and my neighbors are listening.

I tell them I believe President Trump was the most effective and consequential president in history for the relationship between the United States and Israel, and remind them that his record of combating antisemitism, including his 2019 executive order expanding Title VI, is second to none. 

I also explain that while the presidential race garners most of our attention, much of the work of highlighting and addressing major issues starts in Congress, in House and Senate committees — and the party in power selects the committee chairs who almost single-handedly determine that agenda. 

Put another way: If you have an issue that you want the federal government to deal with, you need a committee chair who is interested in it, will hold hearings on it, and then do the hard work of drafting, negotiating, marking-up and approving legislation to send to the floor. 

Pennsylvania this year has three of the dozen-plus House contests that will determine whether the GOP keeps its majority, as well as a hotly contested US Senate seat. 

So as I work to persuade my fellow Pennsylvanians to vote Republican, I usually start by asking if they recall watching Rep. Stefanik question the three college presidents. Almost everyone answers that yes, they do.

And I then challenge them with a proposition: The only reason the world had the chance to bear witness to the moral decay of our “elite” institutions is because Republicans held the majority in the House, and Republican committee chairs made the effort to shine a light on college antisemitism and propose solutions. 

Voting Republican in those Pennsylvania races will ensure this work can continue beyond January 2025.

I also remind my neighbors that incumbent Sen. Bob Casey and his Democratic colleagues have held zero hearings focused exclusively on exposing antisemitism — and that they’ve stalled the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which the House passed with broad bipartisan support. 

Ending this logjam requires a GOP Senate majority, starting with Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania. 

My message really is this simple: If you care about exposing and repairing the scourge of antisemitism on our campuses and in our communities, Republicans must have your vote on Nov. 5.

Jeff Bartos is a Republican strategist from Pennsylvania. X: @Jeff_Bartos