With the 2025-26 school year kicking off, Sens. Dave McCormick (R-PA) and John Fetterman (D-PA) wrote to the presidents of five Pennsylvania universities urging them to work with their Jewish communities to ensure Jewish students’ safety and ability to participate in campus life.

McCormick and Fetterman wrote the letters to the presidents of Lehigh University, Pennsylvania State University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Pittsburgh and Temple University, and suggested in part that the schools should cover additional security expenses incurred by campus Jewish organizations.

“We write to you to urge you, as a leader of a Pennsylvania university with a large Jewish student population, to commit to ensuring Jewish institutions on your campus are equipped to protect the students they serve, including by allocating the resources to do so,” the lawmakers wrote. “It is incumbent on all of us — especially our nation’s universities — to ensure vibrant Jewish life is not compromised or driven into the shadows.”

They urged the college presidents to “work with your campus’s Jewish institutions and ensure all students, regardless of their race, ethnicity, or shared ancestry, are safe and able to fully participate in campus life.”

The senators noted that antisemitic harassment and violence has plagued Jewish communities and institutions on campuses in the state, that “many Jewish institutions have been forced to cover the costs of additional security” and that students have been forced to hide their Judaism.

McCormick and Fetterman told the schools that “no students should feel like they must risk their safety” to practice their religion and that institutions such as Hillel and Chabad should not be forced to divert funding from programs toward security expenses.

They praised some Pennsylvania schools for taking steps to enforce their campus policies, break up encampments and suspend student groups involved in antisemitic activity.

Following Elizabeth Magill’s resignation as the president of the University of Pennsylvania, public attention is now focusing on Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which are facing calls to unseat their own presidents. But Harvard’s Claudine Gay and MIT’s Sally Kornbluth are thus far facing less in-state political pressure for their resignations.

Pressure from Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro played a role in Magill’s ouster; other Pennsylvania political figures, such as Senate candidate David McCormick and Sens. Bob Casey (D-PA) and John Fetterman (D-PA) were also critical of the former Penn president. But such calls have been less prevalent so far from within Massachusetts.

“Strong, moral leadership should be qualification number one for the president of the world’s leading university, but as a tireless advocate for ending the ‘cancel culture’ so pervasive at Harvard over the past decade, I’m not going to rush to cancel the president,” Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA), a Harvard alum, said in a statement to Jewish Insider on Monday. “That’s a decision the university’s governing boards should consider carefully.”

Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA) said Friday, “I would say that in the last two months, Dr. Gay has been making a lot of second and third statements when she should have gotten it right the first time. Genocide is unacceptable, period,” but said he’d leave the decision of her resignation to the school’s board.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said last week, “If you can’t lead, if you can’t stand up and say what’s right and wrong — very much in the extreme cases, and these are the extreme cases — then you’ve got a problem,” but didn’t respond to a question from JI on Monday about whether the schools’ boards should ask their presidents to resign.

Neither did Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) or Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, a Democrat.

Gay came under increased scrutiny over the weekend over accusations she plagiarized portions of her doctoral thesis, which she has denied.

Several prominent Harvard alums in Congress, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), also did not respond to requests for comment.

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), who led the questioning at a House hearing last week that fueled outrage toward the three college leaders, renewed her calls on Monday for Gay and Kornbluth to be fired.

“As clear evidence of the vastness of the moral rot at every level of these schools, this earthquake has revealed that Harvard and MIT are totally unable to grasp this grave question of moral clarity at this historic moment as the world is watching in horror and disgust. It is pathetic and abhorrent,” Stefanik said in a statement. “The leadership at these universities is totally unfit and untenable.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who led a letter with Stefanik and other Republican Harvard alums in October raising concerns about the treatment of Jewish students on campus, said on his podcast on Monday, “I think we could easily see all three of these college presidents lose their jobs because of this testimony.”

“Both those institutions are hoping this just blows over,” Cruz continued. “They’re defending them in essence by not firing them right away after they witnessed this testimony.”