Virginia Foxx, the North Carolina Republican who chairs the House education committee, says Columbia University’s failure to turn over more text messages among officials along with other records has slowed down the panel’s investigation into antisemitism at the New York City institution.
Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images
After investigating antisemitism at Columbia University for six months and receiving thousands of pages of documents, Republicans on the House Education and Workforce Committee say the university has failed to turn over necessary documents that would aid its inquiry.
Those documents include all communications among university officials about antisemitism since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, Board of Trustees meeting minutes and records related to student disciplinary cases related to antisemitism.
To force the university to hand over the documents, the committee’s chairwoman subpoenaed Columbia on Wednesday, following through on a threat issued earlier this month. Columbia has until Sept. 4 to comply with the order. This is the second time in the committee’s history that the panel has subpoenaed a college or university—and the first was relatively recent: Harvard University was subpoenaed in February as part of a similar investigation.
Experts warned that the Harvard order should put other institutions on notice as congressional Republicans ratchet up their scrutiny of higher education. The subpoenas, and the investigations they are part of, concern higher education leaders who say they could set a new precedent for partisan oversight of colleges, infringe on institutional autonomy and undermine academic freedom.
Representative Virginia Foxx, the North Carolina Republican who chairs the committee, wrote in the subpoena cover letter that “the requested documents are essential in aiding the Committee’s consideration of potential legislation to combat antisemitism in postsecondary institutions and towards fulfilling the committee’s oversight responsibility.”
House Republicans on the several committees have opened wide-ranging investigations of at least 10 colleges and universities in the last few months as part of an effort to crack down on campus antisemitism—and on institutions that don’t, in their view, sufficiently respond to reports of antisemitic harassment and discrimination. Colleges have seen an increase in antisemitic incidents since the start of the war in Gaza, which spurred numerous protests in support of the Palestinian people. Those protests intensified in late spring when students at dozens of colleges, including at Columbia, set up encampments to protest the war.
The House education committee has led the Republican crackdown, requesting troves of documents from colleges and holding combative hearings with university leaders. So far, three presidents who testified in front of the committee have resigned in part because of the fallout from their appearances, including Columbia’s leader, who stepped down last week to take a job with the United Kingdom’s foreign secretary.
Foxx acknowledged the leadership change in her letter to interim president Katrina Armstrong.
“While the Committee must move forward with compulsory process as previously indicated, we sincerely hope that Columbia’s new leadership will result in increased cooperation,” she said.
The committee opened its investigation into Columbia in February, citing “grave concerns regarding the inadequacy of Columbia’s response to antisemitism on its campus.” Since then, the university has turned over 47,000 pages, though a committee spokesperson said that the “overwhelming majority has been completely unsubstantial.” The committee has received and released damaging text messages among university officials that led to their dismissal as well as information about discipline cases for students involved with the spring protests.
Foxx wrote that Columbia has failed to turn over “a substantial number of text and electronic messages” as well as notes and other records from board meetings despite having “considerable time to fulfill” the requests. Additionally, the list of student discipline cases that Columbia handed over included incidents since April 17, but the committee wants details about cases dating back to Oct. 7.
A Columbia spokesperson said in a statement Wednesday that the university is “committed to combating antisemitism and all forms of discrimination. We have provided thousands of documents over the past seven months in response to the committee’s dozens of ongoing requests, and we remain committed to cooperating with the committee.”
The university has received more than 100 requests from the committee since February, the spokesperson said, turning over texts, emails, disciplinary records and board materials totaling 14,800 documents that span more than 47,400 pages. That effort has included collecting documents from more than 50 individuals.
But Foxx said in a separate statement that Columbia administrators’ actions have slowed the investigation.
“The information we have obtained points to a continued pattern of negligence towards antisemitism and a refusal to stand up to the radical students and faculty responsible for it,” Foxx said. “The goal of this investigation has always been to protect Jewish students and faculty, and if compulsory measures are necessary to obtain the documents the Committee requires, so be it.”