US university presidents face firestorm over evasive answers on antisemitism

Congressional testimony on campus policies by heads of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and MIT draws criticism

The presidents of three of the nation’s top universities are facing intense backlash, including from the White House, after they appeared to evade questions during a congressional hearing about whether a student calling for the genocide of Jews would constitute harassment under the schools’ codes of conduct.

In a contentious, hours-long debate on Tuesday, the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) sought to address the steps they were taking to combat rising antisemitism on campus since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war. But it was their careful, indirect response to a question posed by the Republican congresswoman Elise Stefanik of New York that drew scathing criticism.