Daily Kickoff
Good Wednesday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we preview tonight’s GOP presidential debate and report on yesterday’s House Committee on Education and the Workforce hearing with the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and MIT about campus antisemitism. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Jonathan Greenblatt, Julia Ioffe and Morgan Ortagus.
Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley has the most at stake in tonight’s GOP presidential debate, now narrowed down to four challengers to former President Donald Trump: Haley, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, Jewish Insider Editor-in-Chief Josh Kraushaar writes.
The debate will be held in Tuscaloosa, Ala., and co-hosted by NewsNation, “The Megyn Kelly Show” on SiriusXM, The Washington Free Beacon and Rumble.
Haley, as the Trump challenger with the most momentum, will likely be facing fire from all three of her rivals. DeSantis, attempting to consolidate conservative support to perform well in Iowa, will want to paint his rival as too aligned with the Republican establishment. He’ll need to cap her support to the college-educated, Trump-skeptical voters that make up a big part of her coalition — and prevent her from making inroads with his base of grassroots conservatives.
Christie, who barely qualified for the debate and is facing calls from some top donors to drop out, is competing against Haley for more moderate voters in New Hampshire. The big question for Christie is whether he’ll aggressively go after Haley — which would be in his narrow self-interest — or whether he’ll be more focused on prosecuting the case against Trump.
Ramaswamy, who has been fading in the polls but holds appeal with the anti-establishment wing of the party, will also likely be a Haley thorn — given his isolationist views on foreign policy and out of a desire to exact revenge on her jabs at him in the previous debates.
Trump remains the clear favorite for the GOP nomination. DeSantis’ campaign is feuding with its well-funded super PAC, and struggling to make the inroads it needs in Iowa. And even if Haley emerges as a capable challenger to Trump, she’ll face steep challenges winning over the populist MAGA wing of the party, much of which views her skeptically.
The case for a DeSantis comeback requires a close second-place finish in Iowa, which could give him momentum, or at least revive a struggling campaign. But his reliance on social conservative support in Iowa would still make it tough to make a rebound in New Hampshire, with its more moderate GOP electorate.
The case for Haley to emerge as a credible challenger to Trump is clearer: Tie or finish ahead of DeSantis in Iowa (despite his organizational advantages), parlay that into a close race against Trump in New Hampshire, and win her home state of South Carolina. With the Trump trial in D.C. scheduled to begin just before Super Tuesday, which falls on March 5, it would give an opportunity for a broader swath of GOP voters to reassess whether Trump is their best choice.
Haley is also getting an infusion of campaign cash from new supporters in recent days: She raised over $500,000 at a major New York fundraiser on Monday held at the home of Campbell Brown, according to sources familiar with the event. Haley spoke about the importance of supporting Israel in its war against Hamas and fighting against antisemitism.
“October 7 felt like a wake-up call. Larger number of donors want to back a candidate who is serious and engaged in foreign policy. Nikki is definitely tapping into that,” one participant told JI.
Despite the momentum for Haley, the elephant in the room for tonight’s debate is the one who’s not onstage. Trump holds commanding leads in national polls and healthy leads in the early states, with less than two months left until the first contests.
Most significantly, his political standing against President Joe Biden is healthy enough that leading publications are already warning about a second Trump term, and all the volatile consequences.
campus watch
Calling for genocide of Jews doesn’t violate school policy, university presidents tell

Pressed by lawmakers on Wednesday, presidents of three top universities all refused to say that calling for the genocide of Jews was inherently a violation of their campus policies on harassment and bullying. The presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who have come under scrutiny for their responses to antisemitic incidents on their campuses, testified about antisemitism on their campuses before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce yesterday, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
‘Depends on the context’: Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) pressed each leader on whether calls for Jewish genocide — which she said were embodied in “intifada” chants heard on campuses across the country — violated their schools’ policies. None of the three presidents offered a direct or affirmative answer. “If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment, yes,” Penn President Liz Magill said. “It is a context-dependent decision.” Stefanik shot back, incredulous: “Conduct meaning committing the act of genocide? The speech is not harassment?” Harvard President Claudine Gay also said “it depends on the context,” and MIT President Sally Kornbluth answered that it could constitute harassment “if the speech turns into conduct.” Stefanik described the answers they provided as “dehumanizing” Jewish students.
Protecting free speech: The presidents’ responses echoed answers that they had provided throughout the hearing. They disavowed antisemitism and hateful conduct, but generally said that hateful speech is protected by their campus policies and the First Amendment unless it crosses over into action. They often declined or refused to offer specific details on how or whether they had disciplined or would discipline students involved in antisemitic activity that appeared to violate their policies. They also evaded direct questions about what sorts of comments would be unacceptable on their campuses.
Students’ response: Students from the schools said their administrators’ responses were insufficient. Talia Khan, a graduate student at MIT and president of the MIT Israel Alliance, told JI, “Mostly it was just lip service — it was the same lip service that we’ve heard the whole time.” Khan, who attended the Tuesday hearing, said that Kornbluth’s responses to Stefanik’s question were “horrendous” and “crazy.” “If anyone were, God forbid, calling for the genocide of any other ethnic group, for sure those people would be kicked off campus,” Khan said. “The only time it’s a controversy is just because it’s Jewish people. And it was textbook dehumanization of Jews.”
Elsewhere: Two students filed a lawsuit against the University of Pennsylvania alleging that it has become “an incubation lab for virulent anti-Jewish hatred, harassment, and discrimination.”