The wave of anti-Semitic violence, threats, and harassment that swept US campuses immediately after the barbaric Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, should have constituted a wake-up call to all Americans. It revealed the cowardly character of the country’s academic leaders, especially those directing our most prestigious universities. Over 1,200 Israeli civilians were murdered; another 250 were kidnapped and taken to Gaza; no attack of this scale had been perpetrated against Jews since the Holocaust. Yet, even as Israeli authorities began to respond, American campuses were filled with demonstrators denouncing Israel as a “genocidal” state, calling to “Globalize the Intifada” (that is, the waves of Islamist terror that struck Israel, killing thousands of civilians over two decades ago).

　　In a timely and well-argued book, Poisoned Ivies, Representative Elise Stefanik, currently completing her sixth term in Congress, uncovers the shameful response of the leaders of all but one of the so-called Ivy League universities, plus three others, to the disruption of campus order, along with the physical and psychological attacks against Jews, many of whom weren’t even students. A 2006 Harvard graduate herself, Stefanik is no anti-intellectual yahoo: she came from a family of modest means, and attests to having had an “overwhelmingly positive” educational experience at the school, taught by a number of “exceptional professors.” But that was before the re-politicization of Harvard and many other colleges following the 2020 George Floyd riots, as well as the growing shift of faculty from merely politically “liberal” to the hard left. It echoes the campus turmoil of the late 1960s, another inglorious period for American universities.

　　Even before October 7, there were reasons for concern. Stefanik recounts three distinct “harbingers” of what was later to happen at Harvard, two occurring during her senior year. One was the shoutdown of a national-security career panel by “campus Far Left activists,” who had come not to engage in debate, but to suppress speech they didn’t like, one of them by vomiting. The second was the irrational condemnation of the well-regarded Harvard President Larry Summers for his 2006 speech on women and science, in which, while stressing the school’s “strong commitment to the advancement of women in science,” he also alluded to research indicating a lesser average “aptitude” for natural science among women than men—an un-PC remark for which he was denounced and forced to resign.

　　The third troubling incident was Stefanik’s removal, following the 2020 election, from her (unpaid) position on the Advisory Committee for Harvard’s Institute of Politics. She had publicly raised questions about that election’s “integrity.” She did also “vigorously condemn” the January 6 attack on the Capitol, but nevertheless, posing questions as a congresswoman in her official capacity apparently disqualified her from service on an advisory college committee. (As she notes, when Democratic Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. objected to the certification of President George W. Bush’s re-election in 2004, his continuing membership on the IOC board wasn’t challenged—though Jackson himself subsequently served prison time for election finance corruption.) Already, the leftist bias of Harvard’s administration was evident. Stefanik notes that a 2024 report by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression assessing freedom of speech on college campuses rather astonishingly ranked Harvard dead last.

　　Stefanik also offers models of how college administrators should have conducted themselves in the current crisis.

　　Three years later, still serving on House committees, Stefanik got to turn the tables on the Harvard administration. When Harvard’s Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee issued a statement holding “the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence” less than 24 hours after Hamas’s unprovoked attack, Harvard’s leadership promptly issued a statement that failed to condemn Hamas, instead equating its attack with Israel’s defensive military actions. It turned out, as the House committee’s research discovered, that Harvard leaders had edited out from their statement a description of Hamas’s attack as “violent,” along with mention of the Israeli hostages, choosing instead a posture of moral equivalence between the attackers and their victims. Only after “withering public pressure,” Steanik reports, did President Claudine Gay finally issue a statement “condemn[ing]” as “abhorrent” Hamas’s “terrorist atrocities.”

　　This was the turning point in what became the most-watched Congressional committee hearing ever. When Stefanik asked Gay whether “calling for the genocide of Jews,” as antisemitic student groups had done even before October 7, violated Harvard’s “code of conduct on bullying and harassment,” the president refused to give a direct answer, saying only that “it depends on the context.” Subsequently, when Stefanik posed the same question to the presidents of Penn and MIT, she received essentially the same response. (Obviously the three officials had been coached.) Imagine the presidents’ likely reply if a comparable threat had been issued against blacks, Latinos, or any other “minority”!

　　Gay herself was compelled to resign a couple of months later, chiefly on account of the discovery of nearly fifty instances of plagiarism in her scholarly work. Penn President Liz Magill also resigned, but MIT leader Sally Kornblith remains in office. It is Columbia, however, that holds the worst record of any Ivy school of not only tolerating but promoting antisemitism, culminating in violent demonstrations and building invasion following the October 7 attack. As encampments of protesters proliferated on the school’s campus, its president, Minouche Shafik, avoided having to testify before Congress by “travel[ing] halfway around the world to Dubai to participate” in a U.N. conference about “climate change’s impact on women.” (The New York Times applauded Shafik’s “strategic foresight” in skipping the hearing, even questioning whether individuals in high-profile positions ought ever to testify, given the risk of being questioned by “lawmakers with politicalagendas.”)

　　Stefanik’s chapter on the University of Pennsylvania is particularly helpful for illustrating the shocking extent of antisemitic remarks and actions by faculty, students, staff, and guests. These included (before October 7) a Palestinian writer invited by Penn Students Against the Occupation who had claimed that Israel “harvested Palestinian organs” and had an “unquenchable thirst for Palestinian blood,” and that Zionists are indistinguishable from Nazis. Previously, Penn’s Students for Justice in Palestine celebrated Israeli Apartheid Week by spreading flyers with swastikas and encouragement to “join your local Nazis.” Penn’s leadership at the time claimed that “the content of student speech or expression is not by itself a basis for disciplinary action.” But, as noted in a civil complaint by two students, “It is inconceivable that Penn would allow any group other than Jews to be targeted for abuse or allow students and professors to call for the annihilation of any country. When it comes to the protection of Penn’s Jewish students, the rules do not apply.”

　　Out of the eight Ivies plus four other prominent schools Steanik surveys, only Dartmouth stands out for its record of refusing to submit to pressures to authorize or promote anti-Semitism. In a chapter titled “What Went Wrong?,” Stefanik attributes the near-universal collapse to (1) the “monocultural” surrender of American higher education to “radical left-wing ideology,” including “the insidious Woke Revolution that culminated in the ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’ (DEI) Agenda,” (2) the greatly increased rate of foreign enrollment in our universities, owing to the fact that foreign students typically pay full tuition, room, and board, and the large donations made by countries like Qatar and China, giving them “a meaningful say” over what happens in admissions, curricula, hiring, and student discipline; and (3) “the failed governance structure of universities,” which allows university presidents “to plumb the moral abyss with little accountability” to their boards, who “have largely absented themselves from directing” the institutions’ direction, wishing to avoid “the hard decisions of governing.” With few notable exceptions, little of my 53-year experience as a faculty member at three prominent institutions of higher education (with friends at numerous other well-regarded schools) belies these observations.

　　Stefanik’s proposals for how to fix the problems she has described are targeted at the issues she sees as most crucial. First, restore American colleges to their historic role of training students (American and foreign) in distinctly American principles, including those of Western civilization, rather than succumbing to the influence of foreign donors, such as Communist China’s “Confucian Institutes” and Qatar (the latter of which sponsors faculty who are “overwhelmingly anti-Israel”). Similarly, stem the influence on students of social media like TikTok, which have frequently been used to praise terrorist leaders like Osama bin Laden and the September 11 attacks on America as well as the October 7 attack on Israel. Third, improve university governance by encouraging alumni to take a more active role in promoting accountability.

　　Stefanik also offers models of how college administrators should have conducted themselves in the current crisis. She cites Dartmouth, which held a bipartisan faculty panel (attended or viewed by nearly 2,000 people) “On the Horrific Events Unfolding in Israel and Gaza.” The school’s president, Sian Leah Bullock, argues for a depoliticized university where various opinions can jostle, without allowing any one ideological group to seize buildings or shared campus grounds so as to cut off debate. Similarly, the University of Florida’s then-President Ben Sasse addressed Jewish students and alumni directly, condemning “people in elite universities whose moral relativism” prevented them from identifying and denouncing antisemitic bigotry. Vanderbilt’s President Daniel Diermeier emphasized his school’s “institutional neutrality” on current political affairs—unlike other schools that had taken official positions on everything from abortion to Ukraine. Demonstrators who invaded an administrative building demanding “boycotts, divestment, and sanctions” against Israel were given fair warnings, then interim suspensions, with three arrested and charged with assault. Vanderbilt’s Trustees, along with those of Washington University, adopted a shared “Statement of Principles,” inviting other schools to join them in affirming their commitment to protecting academic freedom.

　　Stefanik further notes that the State Department in August 2025 revoked 6,000 student visas, most for crimes like assault and burglary, but some for supporting or perpetrating acts of terrorism. But the most encouraging development, now coming from the states themselves, is the establishment of Schools of Civic, Constitutional, and Economic Thought at state schools like Arizona State, Florida, Texas, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Ohio, which promise to focus on classical works and on the skills needed for civic leadership. Like emeritus Harvard Professor Harvey Mansfield (Where Harvard Went Wrong), she recommends that universities be compelled to promote “viewpoint diversity” by establishing centers or appointing faculty who would “elevate” respectable dissenting voices as opposed to their near-suppression at many leading schools.

　　As someone in a unique position to comment on what happened in the 2023 hearings, Stefanik’s perspective is valuable. Let’s hope it encourages more universities to implement needed reforms.