The Campus Antisemitism Complex at Elite U.S. Universities

Testimony before

United States House of Representatives

Committee on Ways and Means

Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Neal, and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. It is a privilege.

I direct the Higher Education Reform Initiative at the America First Policy Institute (AFPI). Prior to joining AFPI, I was vice president of academic affairs at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. I began my career on a university campus and spent ten years teaching political science at Morehead State University, where I was an associate professor, political science program coordinator, and faculty regent from 2017-2019.

The nation has watched in horror and disgust this year as spasms of Jew hatred have convulsed U.S. universities. The violent protests and illegal encampments severely disrupted operations on more than 100 campuses.^[1] At Columbia, administrators moved classes online to avoid dismantling the tent city, while Jewish students were urged to avoid campus for safety reasons.^[2] Students around the country have been injured by menacing mobs chanting genocidal slogans. Graduations have been canceled or disrupted.^[3] In all, more than three thousand rioters were arrested by the end of the spring term on at least 72 campuses.^[4]

What has happened on U.S. campuses in the months since the Hamas massacre is shocking on many levels. It is not just that the hatred is deep in the places where we train tomorrow’s public leaders. University administrators have reacted to antisemitism, including its violent manifestations, with callous disregard for their Jewish students’ wellbeing.^[5] So have public servants, including the U.S. Department of Education, which has utterly neglected its responsibility to hold colleges to account.^[6]

But perhaps most surprising of all, the worst of the violence and antisemitic harassment has occurred at the country’s most prestigious, most selective, wealthiest, and most storied institutions. This matters for many reasons, not least because our universities shape the broader culture. Campuses that tolerate and foment Jew hatred are inculcating attitudes that graduates will take with them into their communities, workplaces, and the families they build. What happens on campus today will radiate through American society, reshaping it, for years to come.

Of specific concern to this committee: American taxpayers are funding these institutions lavishly. Elite universities receive billions in federal grants and contracts every year. Taxpayers subsidize the student loans that pay rapidly rising tuition rates. These schools have also amassed enormous endowments that receive supremely favorable tax treatment.

There is a foreign influence problem as well. Elite universities accept billions in foreign gifts and contracts, including from countries with interests antithetical to ours. Some of these institutions enroll higher numbers of foreign students from wealthy families, who generally pay full freight, than they do low-income Americans. A small number of those students welcomed from overseas have led hateful and unlawful protests in breach of the terms of admissibility attached to their student visas.^{[7] [8]} And yet, to ensure that foreign students involved in the disruptions do not have their visas revoked, universities, including MIT, have refused to enforce their disciplinary policies evenly.^[9]

The Campus Antisemitism Complex: Radical Faculty, Activist Students, and DEI

I have come to the view that are three main drivers of campus antisemitism: anti-Zionist faculty; radical students and the pro-Hamas student groups they lead; and the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs that now suffuse elite institutions.

The “Studies” disciplines are generally ground zero for anti-Zionist and pro-boycott, divestment, and sanction (BDS) faculty. They make Jew hatred appear respectable to impressionable students through their research, teaching, and the events they host. Careful research has shown that the presence of anti-Zionist and pro-BDS faculty is associated with higher levels of student-on-student harassment and violence targeting Jews. ^[10] Even in small numbers, antisemitic faculty can reshape the conversation relating to Israel and Arab Palestinians. They have been receiving lavish financial support toward that end from foreign states and entities for almost fifty years.^[11]

Student activists—many of them studying on non-immigrant visas—are the second major driver. They matriculate determined to warp the conversation on all matters related to Israel and Arab Palestinians. Elite universities make immense effort to recruit foreign students in the name of diversity and multiculturism but also because they generally pay full tuition. The student organizations they operate on campuses—Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), American Muslims for Palestine, and similar groups—are coordinated by national chapters and responsible for much of the antisemitic activity on campus.^[12]

The third main contributor to the new Left antisemitism is atmospheric: the radical diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) ideology that now suffuses every aspect of campus life at elite schools.^[13] DEI is not about ensuring that underprepared students have the support they need to succeed in educational programs that promise a high return on investment (Universities should do more of that). DEI’s real priorities are drawn from critical race theory. DEI aims to use the university to reengineer American society away from its founding ideals—equality before the law and equal treatment according to individual merit—to advance a neo-Marxist social justice ideology.^[14]

It does this by obsessively teaching a worldview common to critical race theory, intersectionality, and postcolonial studies: that the world is made up of virtuous victims suffering under evil oppressors. It thereby primes students to make snap judgments about each other—and society—based on skin color and identity group stereotypes. Jews are coded as the oppressors by virtue of their political and economic success. This creates the permission structure for activists to cheer barbaric Hamas terrorists. Jay Green and James Paul have confirmed the strong anti-Israel bias among campus DEI administrators; their review of the X (Twitter) accounts of 741 DEI staff members at 65 “Power Five” universities found that 96 percent of their posts (tweets) about Israel were critical of the Jewish state.^[15]

These attitudes are “in the air” thanks to DEI spending that can reach into the tens of millions annually. Major universities that have divulged the figure acknowledge spending more than $25 million per year.^{[16] [17] [18]} That’s more than a quarter billion dollars over the course of a decade. These resources are used by the DEI administrative complex to reshape every aspect of the university, from hiring and tenure policies, to the curriculum and mandatory trainings, to strategic plans and spending priorities, to admissions policies and bias response teams. Their strategy is to create positive and negative campuswide incentives that reward activism and punish dissent from the new orthodoxy.

The DEI armies are huge: more than 150 full time and contract staff at the University of California–Berkeley (plus 935 part-time and student employees),^[19] 311 positions in the University of Texas system (before the state legislature dismantled DEI offices last year),^[20] and at least 132 personnel lines at the Ohio State University.^[21] The explosive growth of DEI parallels out-of-control administrative spending, which is growing much faster than spending on instruction—even though increasing instructional expenditures is more strongly associated with improved graduation rates.^[22] An academic study focused on the growing number of administrators put the scope of the transformation into perspective: Between 1976 and 2018, the number of executive-level administrators increased 164%, while the number of other professional staff increased 452% (Student enrollment was up 78% and the full-time faculty grew by 92% over the same period).^[23] All of this is subsidized by American taxpayers.

University Endowments

Universities report data about their finances, enrollment and student characteristics, program offerings, academic outcomes, and more to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) at the U.S. Department of Education (ED). NCES maintains the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), which is regularly updated as higher education institutions certify the accuracy of their data submissions.

According to IPEDS, the total value of university endowments for fiscal year 2022, the most recent year for which figures are available, is $887 billion. Private endowments make up most of that sum, about $607 billion, while the war chest amassed by public schools was north of $280 billion.^[24] The vast majority of the wealth held by private universities is concentrated in a small subset of elite institutions. Drawing the line at $100,000 per full time equivalent (FTE) student at private institutions narrows the group to about 300 schools. The combined value of their endowments for FY2022 was $548 billion dollars. These endowments generate impressive returns in good years, and FY2022 was one of them: According to IPEDS, endowment net investment return at these schools totaled almost $143 billion.^[25] At present, endowment income is subject to a small 1.4% tax, but only at private institutions with more than 500 students and endowments valued at more than $500,000 per FTE student.

Universities with the largest endowments are also those that made headlines for tolerating the establishment of unlawful, pro-Hamas encampments and for arrests of pro-Hamas demonstrators. The table below shows that all but one of the 12 wealthiest private universities in the country (Duke) experienced a disruptive campus encampment or saw campus protestors arrested.^[26]

Top 12 Private University Endowments by Value of Assets & Campus Encampments/ Arrests

IPEDS Unit ID	Institution Name	Value of endowment assets at the end of FY 2022	Endowment net investment return (FY 2022)	Per FTE Endowment value	Campus Encampment	Campus Arrests
166027	Harvard University	$53,165,753,000	$12,832,703,000	$2,001,270.53	Yes
130794	Yale University	$42,282,852,000	$12,052,824,000	$2,854,827.63	Yes	52
243744	Stanford University	$37,788,187,000	$8,761,609,000	$2,310,356.26	Yes
186131	Princeton University	$37,026,442,000	$11,883,451,000	$4,701,173.44	Yes	15
166683	MIT	$27,394,039,000	$9,588,633	$2,471,493.96	Yes	10
215062	Univ. of Pennsylvania	$20,523,546,000	$5,823,018,000	$817,378.07	Yes*[27]	33
152080	University of Notre Dame	$18,385,354,000	$6,335,903,000	$1,343,663.96		17
190150	Columbia University	$14,349,970,000	$3,364,720,000	$504,658.70	Yes	217
179867	Washington University	$13,668,081,000	$6,113,196,000	$851,222.58	Yes	100
198419	Duke University	$12,692,472,000	$4,493,547,000	$779,875.39
139658	Emory University	$12,218,692,520	$3,030,013,080	$803,121.63	Yes	28
147767	Northwestern Univ.	$11,361,182,000	$3,066,809,000	$536,461.52	Yes

Source: IPEDS, “Value of endowment assets at the end of the fiscal year” and “Endowment net investment return”

If we plot the 111 universities in this category (antisemitic encampments or protesters arrested) in the universe of 995 private four-year institutions that report a total cost of attendance in IPEDS, we find that antisemitic encampments and arrests are concentrated at the nation’s wealthiest and most expensive institutions.

University Endowment Values per FTE & Antisemitic Encampments and Arrests

Federal Grants and Contracts

The federal government’s investment in scientific research at U.S. colleges and universities is immense. Of the $98 billion in higher education research and development conducted in science and engineering fields in 2022, $54 billion was funded by the federal government.^[28] This supports research that returns value to taxpayers. But federal grants also provide lavish “indirect cost reimbursements” (also known as facilities and administration, or F&A, reimbursement), awarded on top of the direct cost of conducting the research. Some of this no doubt pays for essential expenses: research equipment, maintenance, research-related capital improvement, etc. But this pool of funding (billions in taxpayer money) can be spent on almost anything and inevitably finances administrative bloat on elite campuses—including the enormous DEI bureaucracies.

In an important study, Jay Greene and John Schoof found that the average federal F&A rate at 85 research-intensive universities (weighted by total federal funding) is 58.3%.^[29] At Harvard, the federal rate is 69%. The federal government pays these extraordinary premiums while accepting much lower F&A rates, generally ranging from 0-15%, from nongovernmental grant makers.^[30] This means that the federal government is effectively subsidizing the research priorities of private foundations and private sector funders.

Greene and Schoof propose a market-based solution: “Federal grant-awarding agencies should not pay an indirect rate that is higher than the lowest rate that is accepted from private organizations, such as foundations and businesses.”^[31] Congress could also consider capping F&A reimbursement at a fixed rate—perhaps indexed to research intensity and output. A third option would require universities to provide an itemized accounting of the indirect cost reimbursement necessary to conduct the research as part of any grant application submitted to a federal funding agency. Dr. Richard Vedder, an economist at the University of Ohio, has explained that this solution would allow granting agencies to consider the total anticipated cost of the research project (in addition to its scientific merit) when determining which institution should receive the award.^[32] Why not ask universities to compete on price?

Renewed attention to federal research funding and indirect cost reimbursement rates is urgent given that the universities receiving the largest sums also tend to be those that have tolerated disruptions of campus operations and harassment targeting Jewish students. All but one of the top 12 private university recipients of federal grants and contracts by volume had antisemitic encampments and/or arrests on their campuses this spring.

Top 12 Recipients of Federal Grants and Contracts by Volume among Private Universities & Antisemitic Encampments and Arrests

IPEDS unit ID	Institution Name	Federal Grants and Contracts (FY22)	Campus Encampment	Campus Arrests
162928	Johns Hopkins University	3,619,404,000	Yes
166683	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	1,611,946,000	Yes	10
190150	Columbia University	1,194,510,000	Yes	217
198419	Duke University	990,886,000
243744	Stanford University	899,725,000	Yes
215062	University of Pennsylvania	899,295,000	Yes*27	33
130794	Yale University	743,351,641	Yes	52
179867	Washington University in St. Louis	725,683,610	Yes	100
193900	New York University	695,008,075	Yes	37
147767	Northwestern University	653,671,000	Yes
123961	University of Southern California	644,910,000	Yes	93
166027	Harvard University	642,146,000	Yes

Source: IPEDS, “Federal grants and contracts” FY 2022

The scatterplots below demonstrate that universities with antisemitic encampments and arrests cluster at schools (more tightly at privates than publics) that are both expensive to attend and that receive high levels of public funding through federal grants and contracts (in per FTE student terms).

Federal Grants and Contracts per FTE student & Antisemitic Encampments and Arrests

Foreign Gifts

Concerns about Mideast “influence” on U.S. campuses go back decades. As the New York Times reported in 1978, “Oil wealth from the Middle East is starting to flow onto college and university campuses throughout the country, bringing a bonanza of endowed chairs and new programs.”^[33] That initial flood of Mideast money to U.S. campuses—and specific concerns about gifts to Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies^[34]—led to the establishment of foreign gift reporting requirements in 1986.

Section 117 of the Higher Education Act requires universities to report foreign gifts above $250,000. Unfortunately, weak enforcement by the Department of Education allowed many universities to ignore the requirement. That changed in 2019 when Secretary Betsy DeVos initiated non-compliance investigations at several of the country’s top universities. In 2023 congressional testimony, Paul Moore, chief investigative counsel at the department during the Trump Administration, described the sea change that followed: “enhanced enforcement … produced dramatic results,” including the “disclosure of more than $6.5 billion in previously undisclosed foreign gifts and contributions.”^[35]

The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, which analyzed the updated disclosures for 2014–2019, found that more than $2.7 billion in gifts came from Qatari sources, $1.2 billion came from Chinese entities, and more than $1 billion originated in Saudi Arabia.^[36] Instead of continuing to scrutinize the purpose and effect of those gifts, the Biden Administration closed outstanding Section 117 investigations in 2022 and moved enforcement from the Office of the General Counsel to the Office of Federal Student Aid.^[37]

Foreign entities invest in U.S. universities for many reasons, including to access sensitive technology and to gain influence over cutting-edge researchers.^{[38] [39]} When it comes to reshaping the campus marketplace of ideas, however, gifts to Middle East Studies Centers have paid off. A 2022 report by the National Association of Scholars, Hijacked, looked at more than 50 such centers and concluded that they produce “biased material that promotes the political interests of the donors.”^[40] The 2019 Department of Education study put a finer point on it, noting that Saudi Arabia has advanced “Islamic ideology … through multimillion-dollar donations to elite Western institutions” since 9/11 and uses the gifts to project “soft power.”^[41]

These centers are ground zero for Jew hatred in the academy today. An AMCHA Initiative study of anti-Zionist and BDS-supporting faculty found that 70% are associated with Ethnic, Gender, or Middle East Studies departments. (They sponsor almost 90% of events containing anti-Zionist or pro-BDS rhetoric.) The presence of anti-Zionist faculty, in turn, is associated with significantly higher levels of student-on-student harassment, including “incidents that target Jewish students for harm.”^[42] The ISGAP study reached the same conclusion, finding “a correlation between the existence of undocumented funding and incidents of targeted antisemitism.”^[43]

AFPI totaled the funding received from entities in Saudi Arabia and Qatar by the 111 universities with pro-Hamas encampments and arrests in the Department of Education’s Section 117 database going back two decades.^[44] In all, those institutions reported more than $1.8 billion from sources in Saudi Arabia and more than $3.2 billion from sources in Qatar. The twleve schools that received the most from Saudi and Qatari entities have amassed astonishing sums since 2014, the year recordkeeping improves significantly.

Largest Recipients of Grants and Contracts from Saudi Arabia and Qatar Among Schools with Encampments or Arrests

Institution Name	Gifts from Saudi Arabia & Entities Since 2014	Gifts from Qatar & Entities Since 2014	Total
Cornell University	$3,557,426	$1,782,713,582	$1,786,271,008
Northwestern University	$19,692,017	$485,749,312	$505,441,329
Virginia Commonwealth University	$9,990,273	$248,744,398	$258,734,671
George Washington University	$117,186,182	$2,130,205	$119,316,387
Pennsylvania State University	$133,813,715	$2,059,210	$135,872,925
Massachusetts Institute of Technology	$110,991,770		$110,991,770
University of Southern California	$106,525,343	$3,541,463	$110,066,806
Harvard University	$49,187,485	$16,788,076	$65,975,561
Arizona State University Campus Immersion	$80,839,457	$3,088,749	$83,928,206
University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus	$41,205,442	$12,147,353	$53,352,795
Stanford University	$47,281,447	$1,826,857	$49,108,304
Tufts University	$21,947,745		$21,947,745

Source: U.S. Department of Education, Section 117 Foreign Gift and Contract Reporting Database^[45]

The House of Representatives passed well-conceived legislation to address problems relating to foreign gifts last year. H.R. 5933, the DETERRENT Act, lowers the reporting threshold to $50,000 and creates new penalties for noncompliance, and it establishes a mechanism by which gifts from countries of concern can be cut off. Perhaps most importantly, it requires universities to disclose the purpose of foreign gifts to the U.S. Department of Education. This would bring increased transparency and enable those scrutinizing the disclosures to differentiate between gifts for wholesome purposes from those designed to exert foreign influence on U.S. campuses.

Foreign Students

According to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) data, there were 1,503,649 active student visa records in the U.S. in calendar year 2023, a figure that includes 160,627 post-graduates who remained in the country to work with optional practical training (OPT) status.^[46] Most U.S. colleges and universities enroll a modest number of foreign students. In fact, 4,027 schools had total foreign enrollment counts under 50 students. More selective schools can drive those numbers up. Only 301 universities enrolled more than 1,000 foreign students each in 2023 (13 of which enrolled more than 10,000).^[47]

Foreign students raise complicated issues for policymakers. To be sure, many benefit U.S. campuses by their contributions in the classroom and research labs—and they benefit their home countries with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes with which they return home. We also know from press reports and analysis of social media accounts, however, that foreign students have been prominent among the antisemitic encampments and that they often lead pro-Hamas campus organizations that have been at the center of antisemitic disruptions.^[48]

Institutional leaders can do much more to counteract foreign students’ role in fueling campus antisemitism: They can improve programs to educate foreign students about the campus norms and expectations, they can enforce their disciplinary policies evenly, they can audit academic programs for anti-Israel bias, and they can take much more care not to matriculate

students who have espoused support for Hamas. Unfortunately, university leaders have shown little interest in taking these steps. Congress can prompt them to take the problem seriously by developing new accountability structures and insisting on renewed attention to civil rights enforcement. Separately, DHS should use existing authority to increase scrutiny of students on visas who may have triggered grounds of inadmissibility.

The chaos on campus this spring brought attention to the sheer size of foreign student enrollments at elite U.S. universities. Of the 111 U.S. universities with antisemitic campus encampments or arrests in the spring term, 20 have student bodies consisting of more than 20% foreign students (13 campuses surpass 25%).

Universities with Campus Encampments or Arrests with over 25% Foreign Students

IPEDS unit ID	Institution Name	Total Headcount Nonresident Students (2022)[49]	Total (12-month) Headcount	% Nonresident Students	% of First Time Students Eligible for Pell (2022)
190150	Columbia University	13881	37368	37	19
193654	The New School	3906	11607	34	16
167358	Northeastern University	11949	37702	32	18
193900	New York University	20015	64528	31	24
166683	MIT	4006	12923	31	18
143048	School of the Art Institute of Chicago	1166	3843	30	20
144050	University of Chicago	6147	20814	30	15
195030	University of Rochester	3853	13405	29	16
179867	Washington University	4925	18783	26	17
243744	Stanford University	5316	20490	26	19
227757	Rice University	2233	8782	25	17
190415	Cornell University	6486	26304	25	19
166027	Harvard University	9706	39374	25	19

Source: IPEDS, “U.S. Nonresident men and women enrolled for credit during the 12-month reporting period” FY 2022^[50] and “Percent of full-time first-time undergraduates awarded Pell grants” FY 2022.

This analysis raises a more difficult general question: Have elite U.S. universities overprioritized educating foreign students, given the massive U.S. taxpayer investment in higher education? Most would probably agree that it would be hard to justify extending federal subsidies or favorable tax treatment to a university with 100% foreign student enrollment. Drawing a line at a particular point is more complicated. Given that the main problem seems to be that elite universities have strong financial and ideological incentives to recruit wealthy foreigners onto campus, perhaps the time has come to explore policy reforms that restructure those incentives—so that schools that place greater emphasis on educating American students are rewarded for it. It is striking, indeed, that some elite U.S. universities educate more foreign students than Pell-eligible Americans. An analysis that balances America’s interest in attracting foreign talent to our campuses against the opportunities missed by neglecting to enroll U.S. students who would also benefit from the opportunity is long overdue.

Conclusion

Public confidence in higher education was cratering even before violent campus uprisings put the national spotlight on Jew hatred at elite American universities. Unfortunately, the drivers of antisemitism are deeply entrenched, and the problem can be expected to get worse if nothing changes. Given the demonstrated reluctance of university leaders to make necessary reforms at the campus level, new accountability structures will be necessary to create stronger incentives. Immense public investment in higher education rightly makes this an important subject for congressional oversight; it also gives the Congress several powerful policy levers to effect positive change.

[1] Throughout, our discussion of 111 schools that saw antisemitic encampments or arrests relies on the New York Times’ running list of campuses with arrests, which we combined with the Chronicle of Higher Education’s list of university encampments. Sonel Cutler and Alecia Taylor, “Here’s Where Student Protestors Are Demanding Divestment from Israel,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 23, 2024, (updated May 6, 2024), https://www.chronicle.com/article/heres-where-student-protesters-are-demanding-divestment-from-israel. See also “Where Protestors on U.S. Campuses Have Been Arrested or Detained,” The New York Times (accessed May 30, 2024), https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/us/pro-palestinian-college-protests-encampments.html.

[2] Celina Tebor, Zoe Sottile, and Matt Egan, “Columbia University faces full-blown crisis as rabbi calls for Jewish students to ‘return home’,” CNN (April 22, 2024), https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/21/us/columbia-university-jewish-students-protests/index.html.

[3] Johanna Alonso, “Commencement Changes at Columbia and Emory,” Inside Higher Ed (May 7, 2024), https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2024/05/07/columbia-and-emory-university-cancel-graduation-ceremonies.

[4] “Where Protestors on U.S. Campuses Have Been Arrested or Detained,” The New York Times (May 30, 2024 update), https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/us/pro-palestinian-college-protests-encampments.html.

[5] For example, as the U.S. House of Representative Committee on Education & the Workforce has documented, Harvard University has ignored, or failed to act on, the (excellent) recommendations of the Antisemitism Advisory Group the university established after October 7. Committee on Education & the Workforce, Investigative Update The Antisemitism Advisory Group and Harvard’s Response: Clarity and Inaction (committee staff report, 2024), https://edworkforce.house.gov/uploadedfiles/5.15.24_harvard_committee_report_final.pdf

[6] Defense of Freedom Institute for Policy Studies, “Coalition letter to Secretary Cardona re: Anti-Semitic Harassment at Postsecondary Institutions and the U.S. Department of Education’s Grant Programs and Enforcement of Federal Civil Rights Law” (December 7, 2023), https://dfipolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Coalition-Letter-Antisemitism-Title-VI-12.07.2023.pdf

[7] Chad Wolf, “Crack down on student visas to calm campus antisemitism — and quell terror attacks,” New York Post (May 29, 2024), https://nypost.com/2024/05/29/opinion/crack-down-on-student-visas-to-calm-campus-antisemitism/.

[8] As former acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf, writing with Robert Law, explained in an AFPI issue brief, the unlawful protests we witnessed this spring “have resulted in assaults on law enforcement, property damage, violations of university policies, and the hurling of antisemitic slurs. The foreign students participating in these acts have likely breached the terms of their student visas, including triggering the grounds of inadmissibility for (1) committing crimes involving moral turpitude, (2) espousing or providing support of terrorist activities, (3) adversely affecting U.S. foreign policy, and (4) misrepresenting facts in the visa process.” https://americafirstpolicy.com/issues/america-first-reforms-to-foreign-student-visas, p.3. Chad Wolf and Robert Law, America First Reforms to Foreign Student Visas, (America First Policy Institute, 2024), at 3, https://americafirstpolicy.com/issues/america-first-reforms-to-foreign-student-visas.

[9] Gabriel Hays, “MIT walks back threat to suspend pro-Palestinian student protesters due to visa issues,” Fox News (Nov. 12, 2023), https://www.foxnews.com/media/mit-walks-back-threat-suspend-pro-palestinian-students-due-visa-issues.

[10] Leila Beckwith and Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, The Impact of Academic Boycotters of Israel on U.S. Campuses (AMCHA Initiative, 2017), https://amchainitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Faculty-Report.pdf, p. 3-4.

[11] Jonathan Pidluzny, “Stop the Mideast Money Fueling Campus Anti-Semitism,” City Journal (Apr 23, 2024), https://www.city-journal.org/article/stop-the-mideast-money-fueling-campus-anti-semitism.

[12] For example, an ADL report found that “during the 2022-2023 academic year, 423 anti-Israel incidents originated from SJP.” ADL, “Anti-Israel Activism on U.S. Campuses, 2022-2023” (Sept. 12, 2023), https://www.adl.org/resources/report/anti-israel-activism-us-campuses-2022-2023

[13] Jonathan Pidluzny, Reversing the Woke Takeover of Higher Education: Strategies to Dismantle Campus DEI (America First Policy Institute, 2023), https://americafirstpolicy.com/issues/research-report-reversing-the-woke-takeover-of-higher-education-strategies-to-dismantle-campus-dei, p. 6-8.

[14] Ibid., p. 8-9.

[15] Jay P. Greene, PhD and James D. Paul, Inclusion Delusion: The Antisemitism of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Staff at Universities (The Heritage Foundation, 2021), https://www.heritage.org/education/report/inclusion-delusion-the-antisemitism-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-staff.

[16] For example, the University of California–Berkeley divulged in a job advertisement that its Division of Equity and Inclusion has a $36 million budget. Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79), X Post (March 14, 2024), 2:52 pm, https://twitter.com/sfmcguire79/status/1768349563235053993.

[17] The University of Texas system cut $25 million in DEI spending to comply with SB 17, which requires public universities in Texas to dismantle their DEI programs. Lily Kepner, “Texas lawmakers probe universities’ compliance with anti-DEI law, free speech: Our takeaways,” Education, Austin American-Statesman (May 17, 2024), https://www.statesman.com/story/news/education/2024/05/17/texas-senate-higher-education-hearing-sb17-dei-ban-free-speech-college-protests/73714285007/.

[18] The University of Florida system documented $34.5 million in DEI spending in response to an executive branch directive to map DEI activities and expenditures. Divya Kumar, “Universities respond to DeSantis, saying they spend $35M on diversity programs,” The Education Gradebook, Tampa Bay Times (updated on January 20, 2023), https://www.tampabay.com/news/education/2023/01/19/universities-respond-desantis-saying-they-spend-35m-diversity-programs/. See also https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vQbcRDZmWzewqD_vuFx97zjTIscoG1O8/view

[19] McGuire, X Post (March 14, 2024).

[20] Lily Kepner, “Texas Senate panel holds hearing on DEI, antisemitism. What UT chancellor said of protests,” Austin-American-Statesman (May 15, 2024), https://www.statesman.com/story/news/education/2024/05/15/texas-sb17-anti-dei-compliance-free-speech-antisemitism-at-universities/73677079007/

[21] John Sailer, “How DEI is Supplanting Truth as the Mission of American Universities,” The Free Press (Jan. 9, 2023), https://www.thefp.com/p/how-dei-is-supplanting-truth-as-the.

[22] American Council of Trustees and Alumni, The Cost of Excess (Aug. 2021), https://www.goacta.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/The-Cost-of-Excess_2.pdf.

[23] Michael Delucchi, Richard B. Dadzie, Erik Dean & Xuan Pham, “What’s that smell? Bullshit jobs in higher education,” Review of Social Economy, 82:1 (2021), 1-22, DOI: 10.1080/00346764.2021.1940255.

[24] Institute for Education Statistics, Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), “Value of endowment assets at the end of the fiscal year,” FY 2022, https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/use-the-data.

[25] IPEDS, “Endowment net investment return,” FY 2022.

[26] See footnote 1.

[27] The Chronicle of Higher Education dataset does not include the encampment at the University of Pennsylvania. We have added it to the summary tables because it has been widely publicized and meets the criteria described for inclusion in their list.

[28] National Science Foundation, “Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) Survey,” National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (2022), https://ncses.nsf.gov/surveys/higher-education-research-development/2022#tableCtr10102.

[29] Jay Greene, PhD and John Schoof, Indirect Costs: How Taxpayers Subsidize University Nonsense (The Heritage Foundation, 2022), https://www.heritage.org/education/report/indirect-costs-how-taxpayers-subsidize-university-nonsense.

[30] Ibid.

[31] Ibid.

[32] U.S. House of Representatives, Examining the Overhead Cost of Research: Joint Hearing Before the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, Subcommittee on Research and Technology, and Subcommittee on Oversight (115th Cong., 1st sess., 2017), https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-115hhrg25470/html/CHRG-115hhrg25470.htm.

[33] Gene Maeroff, “Mideast Gift to U.S. Schools Pose Questions of Influence,” The New York Times (May 23, 1978), https://www.nytimes.com/1978/05/23/archives/mideast-gifts-to-us-schools-pose-questions-of-influence-mideast.html?searchResultPosition=22

[34] Gene Maeroff, “University Returns $600,000 Libyan Gift,” The New York Times (Feb. 24, 1981), https://www.nytimes.com/1981/02/24/us/university-returns-600000-libyan-gift.html?searchResultPosition=12

[35] Paul Moore, “Exposing the Dangers of the Influence of Foreign Adversaries on College Campuses,” Testimony Before the House of Representative Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development (July 13, 2023), https://edworkforce.house.gov/uploadedfiles/testimony_-_moore_-_7.13.23.pdf, p. 3.

[36] Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism, The Corruption of the American Mind: How Foreign Funding in U.S. Higher Education by Authoritarian Regimes, Widely Undisclosed, Predicts Erosion of Democratic Norms and Antisemitic Incidents on Campus (ISGAP, 2023), (https://networkcontagion.us/wp-content/uploads/NCRI-Report_The-Corruption-of-the-American-Mind.pdf., p. 7.

[37] Moore p. 6.

[38] U.S. Department of Education, “Institutional Compliance with Section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965” (Oct. 2020), https://www2.ed.gov/policy/highered/leg/institutional-compliance-section-117.pdf

[39] Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, U.S. Senate, “Threats to the U.S. Research Enterprise: China’s Talent Recruitment Plans,” https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/imo/media/doc/2019-11-18%20PSI%20Staff%20Report%20-%20China's%20Talent%20Recruitment%20Plans%20Updated2.pdf.

[40] Neetu Arnold, “Hijacked: The Capture of America’s Middle East Studies Centers,” National Association of Scholars (Oct. 2022), https://www.nas.org/storage/app/media/Reports/Hijacked/Hijacked_Capture_of_Americas_MESC.pdf

[41] Department of Education, p. 24.

[42] Beckwith and Rossman-Benjamin, p. 2.

[43] Institute for the Global Study of Antisemitism, p. 13.

[44] Department of Education, “College Foreign Gift and Contract Report” (February 13, 2024), https://sites.ed.gov/foreigngifts/

[45] Totals include all gifts that were received in 2014 or afterward. When universities did not report a “receipt date” we counted grants in progress according to “contract end date.”

[46] Department of Homeland Security, “SEVIS by the Numbers,” Homeland Security Investigations. https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2024-05/24_0510_hsi_sevp-cy23-sevis-btn.pdf, p. 3.

[47] Ibid., p. 13.

[48] Maham Javaid, “For international students, protesting on campuses has higher stakes,” Washington Post (May 3, 2024), https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/05/03/ international-students-campus-protest-visas/. See also, Canary Mission, “Students,” https://canarymission.org/students.

[49] This figure does not include post-graduate OPT students because they are no longer enrolled for academic credit. DHS figures are higher than IPEDS figures because OPT workers’ immigration records are tied to their schools. For example, NYU has 24,921 active SEVIS records, Northeastern University counts 23,711, and Columbia has 22,982. Department of Homeland Security, “2023 Top 500 F-1 Schools by Number of Active SEVIS Records” (2024), https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2024-05/24_0510_hsi_sevp-sevis-btn-2023-top500-f1-schools.pdf, p. 1.

[50] Another common way to count students is to look at fall enrollment. Fall enrollment figures are slightly lower than the 12-month unduplicated headcount but the same thirteen universities had 12-month nonresident enrollments surpassing 25%.