Reps. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) and Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), chair of the House Republican Conference, led 26 of their Republican colleagues in a letter sent this week to Alan Garber, interim president of Harvard University, citing the “inadequacy” of the Ivy League school’s antisemitism task force.
“Harvard has a serious problem with antisemitism on its campus, including ‘derision and exclusion’ of Israeli students, discrimination and harassment of students by faculty and teaching fellows, and political litmus tests in extracurricular student life,” the letter states.
“Instead of offering a tangible plan to address antisemitism at Harvard, the task force’s most specific and actionable recommendations are to organize public talks on respectful dialogue and religious relations, increase the availability of hot kosher meals and to circulate guidance about accommodating Jewish religious observance and a calendar of Jewish holidays,” it continues.
“Rather than build on these recommendations by presenting concrete plans for implementing them, the task force took six months to reinvent the wheel and offer an inferior set of recommendations,” the lawmakers add. They go on to state that Harvard’s relationship with Birzeit University, located near Ramallah, “whose student government openly supports Hamas, and names buildings after convicted terrorists,” is “extremely concerning.”