Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), chairwoman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, launched an antisemitism inquiry into the University of California, Berkeley, on Tuesday, broadening the scope of its investigations into antisemitism on college campuses.
Foxx sent a letter to UC Berkeley leadership announcing her committee’s investigation into the school’s “response to antisemitism and its failure to protect Jewish students,” adding the committee has “grave concerns regarding the inadequacy of UC Berkeley’s response to antisemitism on its campus.”
The inquiry comes a little more than two weeks after the school promised a criminal investigation into the violent protest that disrupted an invited Israeli speaker on campus in late February, as the Washington Examiner reported. The incident resulted in a female student reportedly being choked by protesters and the speaker being evacuated, among other violent activities.
The committee’s letter described the incident as a “violent riot in which anti-Israel activists assaulted Jewish students and shattered glass windows, forcing the cancellation of an Israeli speaker’s lecture.”
“Anti-Israel students have occupied and blocked UC Berkeley’s landmark Sather Gate, a key entrance to the center of campus, and harassed Jewish passersby,” the letter said. “UC Berkeley’s failure to address this activity breaches a specific and longstanding university commitment to keep the gate unobstructed as part of a legal settlement and constitutes a selective dereliction of duty to enforce university rules against harassment.”
UC Berkeley joins a growing list of universities at the center of antisemitism inquiries from Foxx’s committee. In recent weeks, the committee subpoenaed Harvard University over what lawmakers described as its noncompliance with an investigation, and Columbia University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Pennsylvania have received similar letters to UC Berkeley’s.
In response to the letter, UC Berkeley Assistant Vice Chancellor Dan Mogulof told the Washington Examiner that “UC Berkeley has long been committed to confronting antisemitism and to supporting the needs and interests of its Jewish students, faculty, and staff.”
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UC Berkeley leaders “made clear our condemnation of the terrible incident on Feb. 26 and await the outcome of the ongoing criminal investigation,” Mogulof said.
Read the full letter to UC Berkeley below:
