The House Education and the Workforce Committee subpoenaed six leaders of Columbia University on Wednesday after the Ivy League school failed to provide the panel with documents it requested as part of an investigation into Jew-hatred on campus.
“Columbia should be a partner in our efforts to ensure Jewish students have a safe learning environment on its campus,” stated Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), the committee’s chairwoman. “Instead, university administrators have slow-rolled the investigation, repeatedly failing to turn over necessary documents.”
Foxx said the information that the panel has received so far shows “a continued pattern of negligence towards antisemitism and a refusal to stand up to the radical students and faculty responsible for it.”
The committee is waiting to receive board minutes and information about disciplinary cases related to encampment protests, among other documents, it said.
“The committee today issues a subpoena due to Columbia’s repeated failure to fulfill priority requests by deadlines that elapsed prior to your accession to the university’s presidency,” Foxx wrote to the university’s interim president Katrina Armstrong.
“While the committee must move forward with compulsory process as previously indicated, we sincerely hope that Columbia’s new leadership will result in increased cooperation,” Foxx added.
Per the subpoena, Armstrong must appear before the committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Sept. 4 at noon “to produce the things identified on the attached schedule touching matters of inquiry committed to said committee or subcommittee, and you are not to depart without leave of said committee or subcommittee.”
In addition to Armstrong, the House panel also subpoenaed Columbia board co-chairs David Greenwald and Claire Shipman and vice chairs Abigail Black Elbaum, Mark Gallogly and Wanda M. Holland Greene, who also must appear before the committee on Sept. 4.
Also on Wednesday, Foxx joined Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chair of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, in a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen repeating a request from May 14 asking for suspicious activity reports about groups identified as organizing pro-Hamas campus protests.
Four groups named in the letter that have been identified are the Westchester Political Action Committee, the People’s Forum, Jewish Voice for Peace and Samidoun.
“Considering the serious nature of recent illegal and antisemitic events related to entities named in this investigation, it is imperative that Treasury immediately cooperate and provide the requested documents,” Foxx and Comer wrote.
