The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee held its first hearing specifically focused on campus antisemitism since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks, where panel members and witnesses sparred over the Trump administration’s overall response to the issue and cuts to the Department of Education.

A repeated focus during Thursday’s hearing was on the Trump administration’s moves to gut the Department of Education, including its Office for Civil Rights, which Democrats argued would undermine efforts to combat campus antisemitism.

“I am sure that OCR currently has the resources necessary to investigate these claims,” HELP Chairman Bill Cassidy (R-LA) said.

“With respect, I think an analysis of their current staffing versus what they had and the number of backlog cases would refute that,” Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) responded. “But I appreciate that comment and let’s see what we can dig in and find out together.”

Though those debates fell mostly on party lines, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said that “we need to make sure that office continues to be adequately resourced” so that it can pursue cases in a timely manner and impose penalties for violations of students’ civil rights.

Some witnesses voiced concerns about the impact of the changes at the Department of Education, while Carly Gammill, the director of legal policy at StandWithUs, expressed confidence that investigative efforts would continue, potentially under the Department of Justice.

David Saperstein, director emeritus of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, argued that the Department of Justice lacks the capacity to tackle campus antisemitism cases in the same “holistic” way that the Department of Education had.

The hearing also featured an announcement from Cassidy that the committee was launching an investigation into American Muslims for Palestine and its activities on college campuses. 

Asked following the hearing why he felt compelled to probe the group, Cassidy told Jewish Insider, “You have to look to see if there’s an instigating movement that’s beyond just a spontaneous group of students, that actually it’s not just students who disagree with one another, but it’s concerted activity from people outside the campus who are attempting to portray themselves as students, but otherwise executing these acts of violence. That is important to understand.”

Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) sparred with Charles Asher Small, the executive director of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, over Small’s findings connecting Qatari foreign donations to antisemitism issues on college campuses. Marshall offered a defense of Qatar, accusing Small of drawing inaccurate conclusions, of being prejudiced against Qatar and “picking on” the kingdom, claiming that the country has been a strong and reliable ally.

Sen. Ashley Moody (R-FL) appeared to push back later in the hearing, expressing skepticism that foreign funders broadly have well-meaning or patriotic intentions in providing funding to U.S. schools.

“While I’m sure there are instances of good faith there, we have to pay attention to that,” Moody said.

Sen. Jim Banks (R-IN) spent much of his testimony focusing on China’s potential funding of anti-Israel groups on campuses and elsewhere, with a particular emphasis on the protest group CodePink, highlighting allegations of its ties to the Chinese government.

Banks said he had sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi requesting that she investigate whether CodePink is violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Small agreed that he believes CodePink should be investigated.

CodePink protesters in attendance at the hearing walked out in the middle of Banks’ questioning about their alleged CCP affiliations. Members filmed videos in the hallway outside the hearing room lambasting Banks and others for what they described as fomenting a false narrative about antisemitism taking place during the campus protests.

The hearing also featured heated debate over the Trump administration’s moves to combat antisemitism on campus, with some witnesses and lawmakers arguing that they are more effective and impactful than the steps taken under the prior administration, while others argued that the Trump administration has overreached and violated civil liberties in ways that would not actually help Jewish students.

“We have a very serious antisemitism problem in the United States. It is a problem that deserves a real and a forceful response,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) said. “But the answer to antisemitism will never be authoritarianism. We cannot guarantee freedom if we let Trump march in and steal freedom while we remain silent.”

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Kenneth Stern, the director of the Bard Center for the Study of Hate, engaged in a heated back-and-forth over the latter’s opposition to the Trump administration’s deportations of anti-Israel protest leaders. The Missouri senator criticized Stern and Markey’s positions as “insane.”

“I heard Sen. Markey’s questions, I heard his whole speech. I thought it was insane. I just want to say for the record, I thought it was totally insane. And I think your positions are similarly insane. I think the idea that we would bend over backwards to hug and kiss and make nice with a pro-Hamas rioter, because that’s what [former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud] Khalil is, and that we would say, ‘Heavens, we can’t remove him,’ and that makes Jewish students less safe on our campuses? That’s nuts, that’s nuts,” Hawley said.

Stern responded by noting Saperstein’s earlier point that “if you look at American history, the times where Jews were most vulnerable was during the Palmer Raids in World War I.” Hawley cut off Stern to say, “Jews are vulnerable now on our campuses because of people like Khalil, and I want to say for the record I’m glad he’s gone and I hope he never comes back,” prompting cheers from the audience.