Bowdoin College, a highly-ranked, private liberal arts college in Brunswick, Maine, hasn’t complied with a U.S. House Committee on Education and Workforce probe of the school over Jew-hatred despite repeated follow-ups, the congressional panel.
“If Bowdoin should continue to refuse to fully comply with the committee’s requests, the committee will proceed with issuing compulsory process,” Reps. Tim Walberg (R-Mich), the committee chair, and Burgess Owens (R-Utah), chair of a subcommittee of the panel, wrote to Bowdoin’s president and board chair on Monday.
The school was the site of an anti-Israel encampment from Feb. 10 to 14.
The committee Republicans stated that on March 27, the panel requested all documents related to disciplining of students and faculty in relation to the encampment, to the school’s agreement with encampment leaders and a list of disciplinary actions against anyone for alleged Jew-hatred on campus since Oct. 7, 2023.
Bowdoin responded to the House panel on April 10 with “a narrative response that briefly summarized the administration’s conversations with the encampment participants, but it did not provide documents related to any disciplinary action, documents related to any understanding it reached to disband the encampment or a list of student disciplinary or conduct cases relating to alleged antisemitic incidents or encampments since Oct. 7,” the committee said.
The panel told Bowdoin by phone on April 14 that it was dissatisfied with the liberal arts school’s response. Ten days later, the school’s attorneys sent the panel a “brief summary of Bowdoin’s actions addressing the encampment and noted that the college revoked the charter of Students for Justice in Palestine for the remainder of the 2024-25 academic year and the next academic year.”
On May 2, counsel for the school sent a letter and 225 pages worth of documents to the House panel.
“The letter included a brief narrative summary of Bowdoin’s response to the encampment, a generalized summary of disciplinary measures taken against 66 students and a summary of actions taken against Students for Justice in Palestine,” the panel said. “Of the 225 pages produced, 214 pages appear to be publicly available policies and procedures, none of which are directly responsive to the committee’s requests.”
“Bowdoin’s failure to produce these documents in a timely manner is unacceptable,” the panel said. It gave the school until June 16 to provide the materials.