Over 70 U.S. lawmakers are demanding the resignation of the presidency of the universities of Pennsylvania, Harvard and MIT.
Watch: US university leaders refuse to define call for genocide as violation of code of ethics
According to a Reuters report, lawmakers wrote to the boards of America's most prestigious universities on Friday calling for the impeachment of the presidents who testified before Congress in a special session on the rise in anti-Semitism on campuses they head.
House members, including Republican Alice Stefanik and Democrat Jared Moskowitz, demanded that the boards of elite universities remove their presidency immediately or risk "collaborating with their antisemitic views."
Double standards and dehumanization
The letter from the U.S. lawmakers added that "the answers raised by the presidency of your institutions showed double standards and dehumanization of Jewish communities."
Harvard President Claudine Gay, Photo: AP
They added: "In these times of crisis, we demand that your boards immediately remove each of these presidents and provide practical plans to ensure the safety of Jewish students, teachers and faculty."
Claudine Gay of Harvard, Liz Magiel of the University of Pennsylvania and Sally Kornbluth of MIT testified before Congress on Tuesday and were criticized in the United States and around the world for their answers to members of Congress.
Context-dependent?
Among other things, all three testified that calls to murder Jews by supporting the intifada would be considered a violation of the code of conduct in academic institutions "according to the context in which it was said."
Pro-Palestinian demonstration at Harvard University, photo: AFP
The three refused to give a clear answer and avoided condemning the hate incidents or detailing the actions taken by the institutions to ensure the safety of Jewish students.
Meanwhile, MIT's board of directors expressed support for the university's president, who refused to unequivocally condemn anti-Semitism and calls for the murder of Jews on campus.
In a statement, the council wrote, "MIT chose Sally as President because of her outstanding academic leadership, judgment, integrity, moral compass, and ability to unite our community around MIT's core values. She has done an excellent job, including addressing antisemitism and other forms of hatred, which we reject at MIT."
Wrong? We'll fix it! If you find a mistake in the article, please share with us