'The Backwardness And The Horror': Kevin Kiley Lambasts Protests On College Campuses

4 months ago

At a House Judiciary Committee hearing last week, Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA) spoke about antisemitism on college campuses.

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Transcript

00:00 Good morning, Mr. Kiley.

00:02 Mr. Kestenbaum, thank you for your very compelling and very disturbing testimony.

00:07 I am so sorry for what you and your peers have had to endure, just the backwardness

00:12 and the horror on Harvard's campus.

00:14 I want to reiterate a very important point from your testimony, which is that Harvard

00:20 caved to the demands of the encampment.

00:22 Is that correct?

00:23 That's correct.

00:24 And tell us again how long the encampment was there?

00:27 About three weeks.

00:28 And you had the people in this encampment?

00:29 I don't know if they were students or not, who were harassing Jewish students, who were

00:33 threatening them, who were following them around and monitoring their activities.

00:38 And in response to this, the university gave them what they wanted?

00:41 That's absolutely correct.

00:42 And what were the demands that were agreed to?

00:44 They want a full divestment from the only Jewish state.

00:47 They want a Palestinian study center.

00:49 And they want to have full control over certain narratives that are being given in classrooms

00:56 as it pertains to Israel.

00:57 And this was described as a negotiation.

00:59 Were you invited to that negotiation?

01:01 I've never once been invited to speak with the president, with the dean, with anyone

01:04 of power in Harvard.

01:06 So this is the important point.

01:08 And you have these university presidents, and this has become a trend now of university

01:12 presidents caving to the demands of the encampments.

01:14 And then they pat themselves on the back.

01:16 They say, oh, the reasoned dialogue.

01:18 That's how we got here.

01:19 Dialogue is the answer.

01:20 This is not dialogue.

01:22 This is the opposite of dialogue.

01:24 Dialogue involves a reasoned consideration of different points of view.

01:28 Dialogue is not the preferred mode of operation for anti-Semites and anarchists and terrorists

01:34 and their sympathizers because their arguments are terrible.

01:37 They're morally bankrupt.

01:39 They're repugnant.

01:41 And so they prefer to do things by force.

01:44 And now you have university administrations that are rewarding that mode of operation

01:48 by saying the way that you get to be part of this negotiation is not by representing

01:53 a significant voice on campus, not by someone who's been victimized by the things that are

01:59 going on on campus.

02:00 Rather, the way that we will negotiate with you is if you engage in illegal activities

02:05 and violate the university's rules and harass other students.

02:09 And we're seeing this at more and more universities now.

02:12 Just today, Sonoma State, which is a university in California, announced that they were, in

02:17 response to the encampment there, basically adopting the full BDS program.

02:23 They even said that for flyers that might be out there that made reference to study

02:28 abroad in Israel, they would immediately act to get rid of those flyers so that the word

02:32 Israel doesn't even appear on any of them.

02:34 And then to top it all off, to enforce this new policy, they set up an advisory council

02:39 of students for justice in Palestine.

02:41 I'm not making this up.

02:42 This is actually what they did.

02:45 This council will enforce the agreement, and it's going to consist of members from the

02:50 encampment, faculty, staff, administrators, Palestinian alumni, and other interested students.

02:56 This is an absolute disgrace.

02:58 Any leader at Sonoma State who is party to this needs to resign immediately.

03:03 They're institutionalizing anti-Semitism.

03:05 But I'll give you another example, because you said you haven't been invited to take

03:10 part in negotiations, to have any sort of meeting with university leadership.

03:14 And that's what we're seeing at universities across the country.

03:17 Here's an example from University of California, San Diego, where a student emailed the chair

03:21 of the academic senate and said, "Hope all is well.

03:24 I've been invited to schedule a meeting with the academic senate regarding my experience

03:28 as a Jewish and Israeli student on campus during this academic year.

03:32 Please let me know the follow-up steps."

03:35 The response, and this is from John Hildebrand, the chair of the academic senate at UCSD,

03:41 says, "I apologize, but we can't meet with you at this time.

03:44 There is a lot going on.

03:45 And it's just not possible just now.

03:47 Feel free to send comments to my email.

03:49 But as you may imagine, we are inundated with requests."

03:54 This is an absolutely shameful state of affairs, where you have the voice of Jewish American

03:59 students that is being sidelined, the people who are most affected by what's going on on

04:03 our campuses, but the people who are creating the disruption, who are engaging in harassment,

04:09 who are engaging in threats of violence, and even in some cases, acts of violence, are

04:15 being elevated, are being given a privileged position, and then are having their anti-Semitic,

04:21 anti-Israel demands actually being agreed to by the administration.

04:27 So this has become a much bigger problem than just the sort of scenes that we are seeing

04:33 that are so disturbing that have been described by our witnesses today.

04:36 It has become an institutional problem, the way that universities are responding to this.

04:42 But of course, we know that it's the actions of the universities that in many ways have

04:46 led to this crisis that we're now experiencing in the first place.

04:49 So I want to thank in particular the students here from Harvard and from Penn and so many

04:55 voices that we've heard, courageous accounts from all across the country.

04:58 We need fundamental reform in American higher education.

05:01 I yield back.

05:02 [BLANK_AUDIO]

'The Backwardness And The Horror': Kevin Kiley Lambasts Protests On College Campuses

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