(Eli Pacheco, Headline USA) House Republicans, led by Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., are calling for the federal government to end payments and tax breaks to Harvard University because of its failure to curb anti-Semitism on campus, according to the New York Post.
“We must defund the rot in America’s higher education,” Stefanik told the Post.
The Post attributed $676 million of Harvard’s $6 billion budget directly to federal government funds. Another $2.4 billion came from virtually tax-free investments, and $1.3 billion from tuition, including student loans.
This funding helped Harvard become the richest institution of higher learning in the world, according to the Post report.
It also reported that Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz., will introduce a bill, H.R. 6220, calling for steep consequences for colleges that encourage anti-Semitism.
“Schools make out like bandits, indoctrinating our youth with hate and delusion, all while taxpayers fund the whole thing,” Crane told the Post. “My bill starts to combat this scheme.”
The federal Department of Education is investigating Harvard’s embattled president, Claudine Gay, for possible civil rights violations. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act protects groups such as Jewish students, who have drawn the ire of pro-Hamas protests on campus.
The Harvard Corporation allowed Gay to keep her position, even after damning testimony in Congress about anti-Semitism. She later apologized for her statement that calling for Jewish genocide did not automatically break campus rules.
Funding from other sources is also under fire for Harvard. On Oct. 7, the day Hamas killed at least 1,200 Israelis and took 200 more hostage, 31 campus organizations professed support for the Muslim extremists.
Gay responded that the school had no control over those groups, prompting several wealthy donors to withdraw their support.
Idan Ofer, an Israeli shipping magnate believed to be Israel’s richest person, resigned from the executive board of Harvard’s Kennedy School of government, according to a Daily Caller report. Lex Wexner, Bath & Body Works founder, also pulled funding from its pro-Jewish philanthropic Wexner Foundation, according to the Boston Herald.
