Republican Sen. Katie Britt (Ala.) is putting Columbia University, UCLA, and other schools on notice that the incoming GOP congressional majority plans to crack down on anti-Semitic demonstrations proliferating on college campuses.
Britt wrote an open letter to Jewish students on Friday stating that the rising anti-Semitism at universities was not “acceptable” and that she and her colleagues would not “stand by and allow this to happen.”
“I want to make clear to each and every Jewish student on an American campus: I and my colleagues won’t stand for this. While your administrators may not have your backs, we do,” Britt said.
“Many university administrators stood aside and watched their campuses become breeding grounds for the hatred of Jews—and in some cases actively helped,” Britt said, adding that her office would work with Jewish students on “holding these schools accountable.”
Britt’s letter comes as Republicans have vowed to combat anti-Semitism on college campuses, which has skyrocketed since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks in Israel. A report by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce last month found that many universities “utterly failed to impose meaningful discipline for antisemitic behavior that violated school rules and the law.” President-elect Donald Trump warned that schools “must end the antisemitic propaganda or they will lose their accreditation and federal support.”
The House report documented numerous failures by school administrators to penalize illegal activity and anti-Semitism by anti-Israel demonstrators on campus. Columbia University neglected to take action against anti-Israel protesters who illegally barricaded themselves inside a university building. UCLA failed to prevent demonstrators from setting up a checkpoint barricade that blocked Jewish students from walking through campus.
Last week, anti-Israel activists at the University of Rochester hung hundreds of “wanted” posters around campus that accused specific faculty members—many of whom are Jewish—of supporting “war crimes” in Gaza.
The display prompted an outcry from the university’s president and federal lawmakers, who denounced the posters as an attempt to intimidate Jewish students and faculty members.
