{"id":545,"date":"2024-01-10T20:58:30","date_gmt":"2024-01-10T20:58:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/whatistandfor.co\/LeFachicette\/?p=545"},"modified":"2024-01-10T20:58:30","modified_gmt":"2024-01-10T20:58:30","slug":"universities-face-tax-exempt-status-investigation-over-allowing-harassment-of-jewish-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/whatistandfor.co\/LeFachicette\/universities-face-tax-exempt-status-investigation-over-allowing-harassment-of-jewish-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Universities face tax-exempt status investigation over allowing \u2018harassment\u2019 of Jewish students"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

House Republicans\u00a0are scrutinizing the tax-exempt status of four elite universities as part of a new investigation into the schools\u2019 alleged \u201cfailure to adequately protect Jewish students from discrimination and harassment,\u201d the\u00a0Washington Examiner<\/em>\u00a0has learned.The investigation, which focuses on\u00a0Harvard University<\/a>, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania, and Cornell University, was launched this week by the\u00a0House Ways and Means Committee<\/a>. News of its existence comes as conservatives take aim at schools for seemingly being late to condemn the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led terrorist attacks against Israel, while promoting\u00a0diversity, equity, and inclusion<\/a>\u00a0policies that lawmakers argue \u201craise questions about moral clarity,\u201d according to a letter the GOP-led panel\u2019s chairman, Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO), sent Wednesday to the presidents of the four universities.\u201cAs you know, your institutions are aided by the beneficial treatment provided to nonprofit, tax-exempt entities,\u201d Smith wrote in the letter to Interim Harvard President Alan Garber, MIT President Sally Kornbluth, Cornell President Martha E. Pollack, and UPenn Interim President Larry Jameson. \u201cYour universities also receive funding from federal grants and appropriations, support for student loan assistance, lucrative financial benefits from your tax exempt status, and the advantageous tax treatment of your institutions\u2019 endowments.\u201cYou may also be aware that there are certain standards your institutions must meet to receive this highly advantageous and preferential treatment,\u201d Smith continued in the letter, which questioned whether the universities are operating \u201cprimarily for educational purposes.\u201dSmith\u2019s letter to the presidents is the latest escalation of congressional pressure on universities, particularly after Kornbluth and then-presidents Claudine Gay of Harvard and Liz Magill of UPenn declined in a December 2023 hearing to say whether calls for genocide against Jews constituted harassment under school policies. Magill resigned late last year amid outcry from donors, while Gay stepped down this month after multiple reports showed she engaged in\u00a0academic plagiarism<\/a>\u00a0over the years.MIT spokeswoman Sarah McDonnell told the\u00a0Washington Examiner<\/em>\u00a0that MIT and Kornbluth \u201creject\u00a0antisemitism\u00a0and all forms of hate.\u201d Harvard, UPenn, and Cornell also have been contacted for comment for this story.The Hamas-led Oct. 7 terrorist attacks, which killed more than 1,200 people in Israel, have placed schools under the national spotlight due to\u00a0pro-Palestinian student demonstrations<\/a>\u00a0on campuses that are openly antisemitic. However, many members of Congress have grown extremely frustrated with university administrators for not taking enough disciplinary actions against students, and they have slammed universities for employing professors who were outed as justifying the attacks on social media.The House Ways and Means Committee, in part, oversees nonprofit groups and the IRS. The\u00a0Washington Examiner<\/em>\u00a0reported in November 2023 that the panel\u00a0was investigating Hamas-linked charities<\/a>\u00a0and their finances.In his letter Wednesday, Smith rebuked Gay\u2019s comments in the December hearing equating \u201cintifada,\u201d also known as Palestinian terrorism against Israel, with \u201cprotected speech.\u201d He also said in the letter that Kornbluth had \u201csuggested that antisemitic speech on campus calling for the elimination of\u00a0 the Jewish people would only be investigated as harassment if it was pervasive, severe, and\u00a0targeted at individuals,\u201d and the congressman slammed Magill for \u201cimplying that such\u00a0speech would only amount to illegal harassment if it turned into conduct.\u201dHowever, Smith said, the hearing in December \u201cis not the first time we have heard of concerning responses to\u00a0antisemitism on college campuses.\u201d The House Ways and Means Committee chairman pointed to November 2023 congressional testimony from Cornell University student Talia\u00a0Dror, who said, \u201c[s]tudents, professors, and administrators at Cornell celebrated the\u00a0massacre of innocent civilians,\u201d referring to Oct. 7.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

House Republicans are scrutinizing the tax-exempt status of four elite universities as part of a new investigation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/whatistandfor.co\/LeFachicette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/whatistandfor.co\/LeFachicette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/whatistandfor.co\/LeFachicette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whatistandfor.co\/LeFachicette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whatistandfor.co\/LeFachicette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=545"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/whatistandfor.co\/LeFachicette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":546,"href":"http:\/\/whatistandfor.co\/LeFachicette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545\/revisions\/546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/whatistandfor.co\/LeFachicette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whatistandfor.co\/LeFachicette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whatistandfor.co\/LeFachicette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}