The White House on Wednesday added to the withering criticism elite university presidents face after a contentious congressional hearing on the rise of antisemitism on college campuses.
It’s “unbelievable” the higher-education officials did not unequivocally condemn “calls for genocide” against Jewish people, the Biden White House said.
The heads of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania appeared Tuesday on Capitol Hill and were given an intense grilling from lawmakers over the spike in antisemitic incidents at their universities since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. Harvard President Dr. Claudine Gay, in particular, has faced calls for her resignation for her performance, which featured a heated back-and-forth with Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY).
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Much of the criticism of Gay has revolved around her seeming refusal to say that students who use the pro-Palestinian slogan “from the river to the sea”—which Stefanik likened to the “genocide of Jews”—violated the school’s code of conduct. That “type of hateful speech is personally abhorrent,” Gay said. However, she added, Harvard embraces “a commitment to free expression, even of views that are objectionable, offensive, hateful.”
With Democrats and conservatives alike tearing into Gay and the other testifying officials, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates weighed in on Wednesday with a stern statement.
“We just witnessed the worst massacre suffered by the Jewish people since the Holocaust, the latest atrocities in a heartbreaking, genocidal pattern that goes back thousands of years,” Bates wrote. “President Biden has demonstrated moral clarity during this appalling rise in antisemitism, when it’s more critical than ever to lead by example.”
He added: “It’s unbelievable that this needs to be said: calls for genocide are monstrous and antithetical to everything we represent as a country. Any statements that advocate for the systematic murder of Jews are dangerous and revolting—and we should all stand firmly against them, on the side of human dignity and the most basic values that unite us as Americans.”
Amid the backlash, Gay released another statement on Wednesday: “There are some who have confused a right to free expression with the idea that Harvard will condone calls for violence against Jewish students. Let me be clear: Calls for violence or genocide against the Jewish community, or any religious or ethnic group are vile, they have no place at Harvard, and those who threaten our Jewish students will be held to account.”
Since the start of the Gaza conflict, antisemitism and Islamophobia have both reportedly seen a surge. In the weeks following the Oct. 7 attack, the Anti-Defamation League claimed its data showed a 388-percent increase in antisemitic incidents. Additionally, the Council on American-Islamic Relations claimed anti-Muslim incidents had jumped three times over the same period as last year.
While the Biden administration continues to reaffirm its strong support for Israel, the White House’s stance in the two-month-old war is becoming increasingly unpopular among its Democratic base, especially with Palestinian deaths in Gaza now reaching 16,000. Nearly 70 percent of Democrats younger than 35 disapprove of the way Biden has handled the war, and roughly three-fourths of those voters express more sympathy for the Palestinians than Israelis. In fact, a vast majority of the American public backs a permanent ceasefire in the war.
At the same time, while the administration is denouncing genocidal language aimed at Jewish people, dozens of White House staffers are urging the president to push to stop the war in Gaza and end “Israeli apartheid” in the region.
“We were horrified by the brutal October 7th Hamas attack on Israeli civilians, and we are horrified by the brutal and genocidal response by the Israeli government, funded by our American tax dollars, which has killed over 14,000 innocent Palestinian civilians in Gaza, a large percentage of whom are children,” an anonymous letter signed by over 40 White House interns read.
