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U.S. representative Jim Banks, an Indiana Republican, told a group of business leaders that this month’s hearing on campus antisemitism was the first step in a broader plan to defund elite universities, CNBC reported Monday.
Following the combative Dec. 5 hearing that featured the presidents of Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania, the House Education and Workforce Committee opened investigations into those institutions. Banks, a member of that committee, who is running for Senate in Indiana, said those investigations are the second step. The inquiries are centered in part on how institutions responded to reports of campus antisemitism, along with their policies and disciplinary procedures.
Banks said the committee will be looking to see if the institutions are creating an unsafe environment for Jewish students.
“And once we prove it, third, that’s when we defund these universities by cracking down on not backing their student loans, taxing their endowments and forcing the administration to actually conduct civil rights investigations,” Banks said on the private call, of which CNBC received a recording.
A Banks aide told CNBC that the congressman was speaking for himself, not the committee.
Representative Virginia Foxx, the North Carolina Republican who chairs the education committee, said in a recent interview with The Hill that Columbia University and Cornell University are also under congressional investigation, along with “lots of schools.” The committee has hired a full-time staffer to oversee the investigations, CNBC reported.
The education committee recently advanced a bill that would cut off federal student loans to wealthy private colleges in order to pay for a Pell Grant expansion, and other lawmakers have proposed legislation that would tax university endowments.
