Led by Reps. Tim Walberg and Elise Stefanik, House members said they have ‘serious concerns regarding the inadequacy’ of the task force’s recommendations

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People walk through Harvard Yard at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts on December 12, 2023.
In a new letter to interim Harvard President Alan Garber sent on Monday, 28 Republican House members, led by Reps. Tim Walberg (R-MI) and Elise Stefanik (R-NY), said that the Harvard antisemitism task force’s recent preliminary recommendations on responding to campus antisemitism don’t go nearly far enough to address the situation on the campus.
The lawmakers said they have “serious concerns regarding the inadequacy” of the recommendations, which are “weaker, less detailed, and less comprehensive” than those presented by a previous task force in December 2023. Harvard Jewish leaders and alumni have said they’re disappointed by the recommendations, released in late June.
“Instead of offering a tangible plan to address antisemitism at Harvard, the task force’s most specific and actionable recommendations are to organize public talks on respectful dialogue and religious relations, increase the availability of hot kosher meals, and to circulate guidance about accommodating Jewish religious observance and a calendar of Jewish holidays,” the letter reads.
It calls the recommendations “particularly alarming given that Harvard’s leaders had already received a strong, detailed, and comprehensive set of recommendations” from the previous task force, arguing that the current group should have built on that framework.
The lawmakers said that Garber needs to “publicly address” criticisms of the task force from Jewish community members, adopt and begin to implement the recommendations from both task forces before the next semester and sever Harvard’s relationship with Birzeit University in the West Bank, whose student government and administration have expressed support for Hamas.
The letter states that the task force was correct to support disciplinary action and condemnation in response to the “serious problem with antisemitism” on Harvard’s campus but did not “offer real solutions for doing so.” It also accuses the task force of giving “insufficient attention” to Harvard’s “failures in imposing discipline for antisemitic misconduct.”
The lawmakers said that the task force “left numerous other significant issues wholly unaddressed,” such as academic programs that have seen significant issues with anti-Israel and antisemitic sentiment, student groups’ violations of Harvard rules, failures by Harvard’s Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging office to address antisemitism, falling Jewish enrollment, a lack of viewpoint diversity among faculty on the Middle East, masked protests and possible foreign influence.
They further said that the university “has a consistent practice of balancing statements and efforts regarding antisemitism with similar ones regarding Islamophobia and anti-Arab bias.”
“While hatred and discrimination against Muslims and Arabs is deplorable and must be addressed, there is simply no comparison between the explosion of pervasive antisemitism on Harvard’s campus and instances of Islamophobia or anti-Arab bias,” the Republicans continued. “These constant attempts at balancing serve to trivialize antisemitism and distract from the urgency and severity of the problem.”
Other signatories to the letter include Reps. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND), Jim Banks (R-IN), Aaron Bean (R-FL), Gus Bilirakis (R-FL), Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-OR), Anthony D’Esposito (D-NY), Randy Feenstra (R-IA), Russell Fry (R-SC), Lance Gooden (R-TX), Michael Guest (R-MS), Erin Houchin (R-IN), Ronny Jackson (R-TX), Nick LaLota (R-NY), Nick Langworthy (R-NY), Mike Lawler (R-NY), Mariannete Miller-Meeks (R-IA), Burgess Owens (R-UT), Keith Self (R-TX), Pete Sessions (R-TX), Jason Smith (R-MO), Lloyd Smucker (R-PA), Michelle Steel (R-CA), Claudia Tenney (R-NY), Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ), Randy Weber (R-TX) and Rudy Yakym (R-IN).
Two bills, which Republicans said would punish schools failing to combat antisemitism by targeting their tax benefits, passed the Ways and Means Committee along party lines; Democrats argued the bills are ill-conceived and ineffective

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Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO), chair of the House Ways and Means Committee
The House Ways and Means Committee split along partisan lines on Tuesday over two bills that Republicans said would punish colleges and universities for campus antisemitism by imposing tax penalties and potentially reassessing their tax-exempt statuses.
Both bills, the University Accountability Act and the Protecting American Students Act, passed the committee by party-line votes. Democrats argued that the bills were not serious or effective efforts to combat antisemitism.
The University Accountability Act would impose tax penalties on colleges and universities when a federal court finds that they have violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which bans discrimination based on race, color and national origin. Those penalties, enforced by the Internal Revenue Service, would total $100,000 or 5% of the total of their administrative salaries, whichever is greater.
If a school is found to have violated Title VI on three separate occasions, the Treasury Department would be required to review the school’s tax-exempt status.
Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO), the committee chair, argued that colleges and universities, in failing to protect Jewish students, are not fulfilling the educational purpose for which they receive tax exempt status, and should be subject to penalties.
“It’s time that these universities learn their inaction has consequences,” Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY), the bill’s lead sponsor, added. “They have a responsibility to keep their students safe.”
Democrats argued that the bill was rushed and ill-conceived, and would largely not address current issues. They said that increased funding for the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, which evaluates and adjudicates Title VI complaints, would be a better approach to the problem.
Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL) said that the proposal takes an insufficiently tailored approach and emphasized the need for education.
“This bill fails to address the issue head-on and focuses on punishing schools instead of working to improve them,” Schneider said. “I’m concerned about this bill’s unintended consequence: the very real potential for creating a vicious cycle of aggressive and tendentious claims against universities.”
The Orthodox Union supported the bill, arguing in a letter to committee leaders that it would “give strength and meaning to the demands of Title VI and hopefully compel recalcitrant administrators to do what they ought to already.”
The Protecting American Students Act would change the way that taxes on college and university endowments are assessed, with the goal of incentivizing schools to admit more American citizens or permanent residents, and fewer non-citizens. Schools with larger non-citizen populations would be subject to taxes on their endowments. Smith said the bill would expand endowment taxes to around a dozen additional schools.
Smith and other Republicans, suggesting that antisemitic activity is being driven in significant part by non-American students, argued that incentivizing wealthy, elite schools to increase their populations of American students would help protect against antisemitism.
“Universities — many of whom have ever-growing foreign student populations and receive massive amounts of foreign funding — focus more on appeasing those with antisemitic views on their campuses than protecting all students, upholding their institutional values and holding those accountable who violate such policies and values,” Smith said.
Republicans also argued that schools should be incentivized to admit more U.S. students for other reasons as well, and that the change would also align tax policy with Department of Education policy for determining student aid eligibility.
Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA) and other Democrats said that the proposal was both xenophobic and would fail to actually address antisemitism.
“Instead of protecting victims of hate this bill would simply blame campus unrest on supposed foreign agitators and use this as an excuse to punish institutions that enroll international students regardless of where they come from,” Chu said. “Scapegoating these students does not represent a solution to antisemitism or other forms of discrimination. In fact, it does the exact opposite by blaming all foreigners for society’s ills.”
Rep. Drew Ferguson (R-GA), the lead sponsor, acknowledged that the bill alone will not solve campus antisemitism, but said, “I think it’s a matter of fairness to the American taxpayer and to American students.”