[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 12 (Tuesday, January 23, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Page S207]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]





                             ANTI-SEMITISM

  Mr. McCONNELL. Now, on a recent matter, I have spoken recently about 
the existential choice facing America's most elite universities. In the 
wake of October 7, an alarming surge of anti-Semitic hate swirled 
around the loftiest campuses in our country. And, as we are all 
painfully aware by now, the responses of university administrators were 
not exactly profiles in courage--from the equivocations and weak public 
statements to the absurd double standard invoked in testimony before 
Congress.
  After months of alumni uproar and pressure from the public, Harvard 
and Penn appeared to recognize that it was time for new management. As 
I have said, universities shopping for presidents would do well to 
focus their search on rigorous scholarly integrity, moral clarity, and 
a rock-solid commitment to the even enforcement of free speech.
  Unfortunately, we are still waiting to see any real signs that these 
universities have actually taken the lessons of the past few months to 
heart. Harvard, for its part, rolled out a new Presidential Task Force 
on Combating Anti-Semitism to much fanfare. It sounds promising--that 
is, until you learn that the choice for the cochair of the panel has a 
record of calling Israel a ``regime of apartheid.''
  The university has also made no plans to terminate an exchange 
partnership with the university in the West Bank that proclaimed 
``glory for Martyrs'' in the wake of October 7 and whose students have 
even been arrested for planning a terrorist attack with weapons 
supplied by Hamas.
  So you would be forgiven for assuming that cutting overt ties with 
terrorist-affiliated organizations would be step one in any serious 
effort to reform a university. These responses would be laughable if 
they didn't have such clear, measurable, dangerous consequences.
  Just last month, a poll showed one in five Americans between the ages 
of 18 and 29 doubts--doubts--that the Holocaust happened. Let me say 
that again. Just last month, a poll showed 1 in 5 Americans between the 
ages of 18 and 29 doubting that the Holocaust happened. Perhaps this 
shouldn't surprise us when we look at young people in post-modern 
critical theory that subjectivizes norms and endlessly deconstructs the 
wisdom of the ages and problematizes and assails the very notion of 
objective truth.
  The Holocaust is not an alternative fact. It is not simply a 
narrative to be questioned by a student's lived experiences; yet 20 
percent of the young people in this country doubt whether the most vile 
and systematic genocide of Jews in the history of the world ever 
happened.
  The most elite universities vying to shape their minds have now spent 
months in an embarrassing public struggle to avoid reckoning with their 
role in a rise in anti-Semitic hate. If these institutions ever hope to 
reclaim any mantle of cultural authority they once held, they might 
want to start with taking the world's oldest form of hate a bit more 
seriously.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The majority whip.

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