U.S. Senator Katie Britt Calls for Strengthening Title VI, Protecting Jewish Students
Universities have proven they ‘deserve no benefit of the doubt at all in how they’re going to handle antisemitism’
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Katie Britt (R-Ala.) participated in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing entitled “Never to Be Silent: Stemming the Tide of Antisemitism in America.” She heard from multiple witnesses, including Alyza Lewin, President of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights under Law.
Senator Britt began by recounting her trip to Israel almost immediately following the October 7, 2023, terrorist attacks by Hamas: “. . . what we saw was unimaginable. [I] couldn’t wrap my head around it. It was gut-wrenching, it was heartbreaking, it was just out of the bounds of what you thought anyone was capable of doing. And when we came home to see what then occurred on college campuses here, I could not have been more disgusted . . .”
She continued, highlighting some of the most egregious acts of antisemitism on college campuses, including at some of our nation’s “elite institutions,” in recent months: “ . . . bottom line, Jewish students should have never been prohibited from entering sections of the campus because of who they were, yet that happened at UCLA. Jewish students should have never had to navigate a professor tweeting out that Hamas’ barbaric attacks constituted, ‘such an amazing day!’ but that happened at Yale. Jewish students should have never had to experience a professor referring to Hamas’ attack as something that was ‘exhilarating and energizing,’ but that happened at Cornell. And Jewish students should have never had to have tolerated comments such as that, ‘October 7th is going to be every day for you,’ or ‘Yes, Hamas, we love you. We support your rockets, too.’ But that, among many other things, happened at Columbia . . .”
In November of last year, Senator Britt penned an open letter to Jewish college students across America, expressing her unwavering support amid a disturbing rise in antisemitic incidents on campuses. She reiterated her calls in the letter to hold universities accountable in her hearing remarks, saying, “These schools and their administrations, who tolerated this, who allowed this to happen . . . brought shame on themselves. We have to take what we’ve learned from this, and we have to make sure that it never happens again. They’ve repeatedly proven that they deserve no benefit of the doubt at all in how they’re going to handle antisemitism. I’m glad that both Congress and the Trump Administration have said this is going to be a priority.”
Senator Britt directed her first line of questioning to Lewin, asking, “I know that the Brandeis Center undertakes a great deal of research and legal advocacy in this space . . . I’m interested in your view of what steps Congress actually needs to take to strengthen Title VI as it relates to combating antisemitism and just a hostile educational environment and those claims in courts . . .”
Lewin responded, “I think starting off with adopting the IHRA definition. Right, let’s codify the executive order 13899. That’s really important because that will help us understand and recognize the difference between, as I’ve said, a legitimate political debate and the vilification of Jews. When you demonize, apply a double standard, delegitimize not only individual Jews, but the Jewish collective, the Jewish nation-state of Israel, that’s not criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country. We need that definition because we need to be able to start teaching our society how to define and understand the difference between the two. And then I do think we need to give whatever strength we can, as Senator Moody was saying, to make sure that we’re holding accountable anybody who is violating Title VI . . .”
“ . . . and removing federal funding, halting it. Why would we give you money if you were violating Title VI?” asked Senator Britt.
“Correct,” stated Lewin. “Because what needs to be understood, as you said when you talked about the Marcus policy from 2004, is that when faith-based groups are targeted on the basis of their shared ancestry or ethnicity, that is a violation of Title VI. If you see groups that are being denied the equal access to educational opportunities because of their shared ancestry ethnicity, when you have folks on campus who are encircling Jews, spinning at Jews, cutting the Jews out, saying to the Jews, ‘you’re not welcome, not only in my club, you can’t go through the encampment’ . . . They are being shunned, they’re being marginalized, and it is not a conversation about the Arab-Israeli conflict . . .”
Senator Britt continues to be an outspoken and strong supporter of the Jewish community and Israel. In the hearing, she also spoke to her strong support of the Antisemitism Awareness Act and the Countering Antisemitism Act.
A video of Senator Britt’s full line of questioning can be viewed here.
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