Heads of Northwestern, Rutgers, UCLA begin to testify before US House committee on campus tensions

WASHINGTON – The heads of three universities and an academic honor society are testifying to the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce about their universities’ handling of anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian protests.

The hearing is the sixth event the committee and its subcommittees have held on schools’ responses to tensions that have flared since war erupted in Gaza after Hamas’s brutal October 7 massacre in southern Israel.

On dozens of campuses throughout the country, students set up tents and held rallies to call on US President Joe Biden to do more to end the fighting in Gaza and to demand that their universities divest from companies that back Israel.

The presidents of Harvard and University of Pennsylvania resigned after backlash over their congressional testimony in December about antisemitism on campus.

House lawmakers will now hear from the heads of Northwestern University, Rutgers University and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

“Each of you refused to enforce your own rules, preserve campus safety and protect Jewish students,” House Education Committee Chair Virginia Foxx says in her opening remarks.

The head of the Phi Beta Kappa Society will testify in his personal capacity, a spokesperson for the organization says.