The Congresswoman Going After Elite Universities on Antisemitism

Virginia Foxx, the Republican congresswoman from North Carolina, has spent the last few months giving elite schools a hard time.

As the chairwoman of the House committee on education, she oversaw a tense hearing in December that spurred the resignations of the presidents of University of Pennsylvania and Harvard. She has led an investigation of a half-dozen institutions for their handling of antisemitism claims. She has subpoenaed internal documents, and called Jewish students to testify.

On Wednesday, she will preside over another hearing, this time with officials at Columbia University.

The drubbing is part of a campaign by Republicans against what they view as double standards within elite education establishments — practices that they say favor some groups over others, and equity over meritocracy. Others see it as partisan attack.

Representative Foxx, 80, does not like the term “elite,” and questions whether these schools even deserve the title.

“I call them the most expensive universities in the country,” she said the other day, while traveling around her district, which winds through small working-class towns in the Blue Ridge Mountains.