'She Needs To Step Down': Speaker Johnson Calls On Columbia University's President To Resign

4 months ago

At a House Republican press briefing on Thursday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) spoke about antisemitism on college campuses.

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Transcript

00:00 [PAUSE]

00:17 Well, thank you all for being here.

00:19 We all know what is happening around the country right now,

00:22 and House Republicans are here to do something about it.

00:25 Over the last few weeks, we've seen absolute lawlessness and chaos

00:29 on college and university campuses across America.

00:33 On Wednesday of last week, I and a handful of my colleagues

00:36 traveled to Columbia University, which became the epicenter in the last couple of weeks,

00:41 to meet with Jewish students there and to see the madness that's happening there for ourselves.

00:46 The anti-Jewish hatred was appalling.

00:49 We heard firsthand from students who are living in fear

00:53 because of the pro-Hamas agitators who have taken over their campus.

00:57 We met with a large number of Jewish students before we had our press event there

01:01 and before we met with the university president,

01:04 and they told us the harrowing tales of what they're having to face.

01:07 It's not right, and everybody in this country knows it.

01:10 After I met with President Shafik, it was clear that she has lost control of her campus,

01:17 and she needs to step down.

01:19 The first and most obvious responsibility of a university administrator

01:23 is to ensure the safety and security of their students.

01:26 If an administrator cannot ensure that, they have missed their first assignment.

01:31 We need to find people who can do that.

01:33 Just last night there at Columbia, students barricaded themselves inside one of the academic buildings

01:38 where they fought with the maintenance crew there.

01:41 They assaulted students.

01:42 They broke through windows, destroyed property, hung Intifada banners from the building,

01:47 and the law enforcement was nowhere to be found.

01:50 We're told that NYPD is outside the perimeter of the campus, but they have not been invited in,

01:56 and they won't go until they are invited.

01:59 What are university officials waiting on?

02:01 What do they need to see before they stand up to these terrorist sympathizers?

02:05 And that is exactly what they are.

02:08 What's worse, though, is that Columbia's choice to ignore the safety of their Jewish students

02:13 and appease anti-Semites has inspired even more hate-filled protests to pop up across the country.

02:20 And what we're seeing right now is people wave Hezbollah flags and Hamas flags,

02:25 their homemade signs supporting what happened on October 7th.

02:28 It's outrageous.

02:29 Hamas endorsed the protest at Columbia University just about two hours before we walked out on the steps

02:36 to have our press event on Wednesday.

02:38 They're proudly chanting things like "Death to America" and profanity and hate-filled slogans,

02:44 and this is utterly despicable, and it cannot be accepted in this country.

02:48 Anti-Semitism is a virus, and because the administration and woke university presidents aren't stepping in,

02:56 we're seeing it spread.

02:58 We have to act, and House Republicans will speak to this fateful moment with moral clarity.

03:03 We really wish those in the White House would do the same.

03:07 We will not allow anti-Semitism to thrive on campus,

03:10 and we will hold these universities accountable for their failure to protect Jewish students on campus.

03:16 And that's why today we're here to announce a House-wide effort to crack down on anti-Semitism on college campuses.

03:23 Nearly every committee here has a role to play in these efforts to stop the madness that has ensued.

03:29 Joining me today are my colleagues in leadership as well as committee chairs of the committees of appropriate jurisdiction,

03:36 and we're going to elaborate on what we'll be doing as part of this whole of the House effort.

03:41 The federal government plays a critical role in higher education,

03:44 and we will use all the tools available to us to address this scourge.

03:48 With that, I'll turn it over first to our House Republican Chair, Elise Stefanik,

03:53 who's been doing extraordinary work on this issue for a number of weeks.

03:56 Elise?

03:57 Oh, I forgot that.

'She Needs To Step Down': Speaker Johnson Calls On Columbia University's President To Resign

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