Elise Stefanik on Campus Antisemitism, Harvard and Higher-Ed Reform

First elected to Congress in 2014, Rep. Elise Stefanik made history as the youngest woman ever to win a House seat. She later rose to chair the House Republican Conference, becoming the highest-ranking Republican woman in Congress. Serving on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, she gained widespread attention when she pressed university presidents with a question that went viral. President Donald Trump nominated her to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, but the nomination was later withdrawn. In conjunction with the release of her new book, Poisoned Ivies: The Inside Account of the Academic and Moral Rot at America's Elite Universities, Stefanik spoke to Newsweek about that hearing, her views of New York City's mayor, funding cuts to universities as a lever to combat antisemitism and what comes next. This conversation has been edited and condensed for publication.

Newsweek: You asked the presidents of Harvard University of Pennsylvania and MIT, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate your university’s code of conduct? Shortly after their equivocal answers, two of them stepped down. Do you think that the institutions have changed since then?

Elise Stefanik: Well, it’s important to show leadership at the highest levels. But my concern is the antisemitism that we’ve seen at our most elite higher education institutions; it goes deep, and it’s not just the leaders. If you look at, for example, foreign dollars flowing into our colleges and universities, if you look at the curricula in many of the Middle Eastern studies programs. So I have deep concerns. Yes, you can change the presidents, but there’s a lot more work to do with higher education reform.

About changing the presidents, were you surprised to hear that former president of University of Pennsylvania Liz McGill just was named dean of Georgetown Law?

There seems to be a revolving door in higher education, and that is part of the problem. We saw this with the former president of Harvard University [Claudine Gay], who ultimately had to step down, frankly in disgrace, not only for her failure to combat antisemitism, but also for her egregious plagiarism scandal of her body of academic work. And the fact that she was given a million-dollar parachute by Harvard and is a Harvard professor, that’s a problem. You saw in the case of Liz McGill, she was forced to step down from Penn. And then was given a position at Harvard Law School and now the Dean of Georgetown Law School. All of these schools have deep, deep problems. In the case of Georgetown, for example, if you look at the significant foreign dollars they take from Qatar, that has not allowed them to speak out strongly against antisemitism. And you’re seeing this play out at the highest levels with the Department of Justice filing lawsuits, for example, at many of these institutions who have failed to protect civil rights of students. But this is broader than just antisemitism. If you look at the political ideology of these colleges, they have shifted further and further to the left. If you look at admission and matriculation trends, they’re declining, whereas other schools are increasing: Schools like Vanderbilt, University of Florida, University of Texas at Austin, University at Austin, they are skyrocketing when it comes to admissions rates. So it highlights a major turning point and earthquake in higher education.

Your book emphasizes the political imbalance in university faculties; you include a statistic citing an 88-to-one ratio at Harvard of Democrats to Republicans. But conservatives aren’t actually a protected class under the civil rights law. As private institutions, aren’t they free to hire as many as they want?

I think it highlights culturally, this shift outside of the norm of sort of mainstream common sense values. And I go back to the founding mission of each of these institutions, particularly our oldest colleges, which in many cases are considered our most elite colleges. Many were founded prior to the American Revolution and were part of the fervor of sort pro-American values. And the fact that these schools have shifted 88 to one, that’s a stunning, stunning imbalance. And as individuals, both as students and parents are making decisions about where they send their children to school, when you have 88 very, very far left professors to one conservative professor, that brings up to me, are they teaching academic excellence or is this political indoctrination? And I’ll tell you, people are increasingly concerned about the political indoctrination happening at schools rather than focusing on academic rigor. It was not always the case. You can go back a few decades, it was about a one to one at some of these schools, and it’s shifted so far to the left. One of the reasons that has happened is the tenure program. Tenure was initially introduced to protect academic freedom, but it’s increasingly become a self-selecting process where you have very left professors selecting even more far left professors.

You’re a Harvard grad yourself. How has your relationship with your alma mater changed in the last couple of years?

Well, I really valued my experience. It was not like that when I was an undergraduate. We had very strong leadership at the time that I was there. And I could name a number of conservative professors that I had, and I cite them in my book, Stephen Rosen, Roger Porter, Harvey Mansfield. Harvey Mansfeld actually just wrote an interesting book looking back on decades of where Harvard went wrong. And it was disappointing to me to see what was happening at Harvard post-October 7th, it was really unrecognizable of the failure to enforce the rules. I mean, you had students, American Jewish students who were physically assaulted, who were spit on, who had Nazi-or had swastikas-written on their door and were targeted, that’s inexcusable. And Harvard equivocated, not only in the pro-Hamas encampments, allowing the takeover of public places, whether it’s the cafeterias or the dining halls or the Harvard Yard. But you also had just a failure to stand up for the civil rights of students on campus.

Invoking antisemitism on campus, President Trump cut off funding to various universities, yet the cuts focused on the sciences, while allegations of antisemitism were mostly focused on humanities. Is that a problem?

My concern was after you had this earthquake of a higher education hearing that really encapsulated not just the antisemitism deep in these institutions, but really the academic and moral rot, these schools had over a year to fix themselves and address it, and they failed to do so. They continued to dig deeper and deeper. And we saw during the Biden administration, there was not a single investigation into these schools launched by the Department of Education. So there was no oversight conducted other than by Congress that was effective. These schools are not entitled to U.S. taxpayer dollars. We have to ensure that they are protecting civil rights of students on campus. And we have seen a gross violation of that. The Department of Justice was correct in launching these lawsuits as well as the Department of Education lawsuits. I find that as a member of Congress where we oversee U.S taxpayer dollars and have power of the purse, in order to get these schools to right themselves, the only way they would respond was the withholding of federal dollars. They could have tried to address it themselves. They failed to do so. So that’s an important tool in the toolkit to right the ship in higher education.

Moving on, you called Mayor Zohran Mamdani a jihadist, but then Trump invited him to the White House in November 2025, and said he could work with him. These are very different views. Whose assessment was right?

Well, that’s not exactly what President Trump said. President Trump says he’s on the campaign trail. And as we know, President Trump loves to host people in the Oval Office. He has called out Zohran Mamdani as a communist, as a socialist, and they have disagreed on a number of issues. And there are issues that they’re working together on. I stand by my statement, and I talk about that in the book. I talk about the fact that Mamdani is a direct result of the petri dish of antisemitism in higher education. I talk about how we would not have a socialist jihadist mayor of New York City were it not for what happened on Columbia’s campus. For example, literally the leader of the pro-Hamas encampment on Columbia, Mahmoud Khalil, is being hosted in Gracie Mansion. You have Mamdani, in terms of his campaigning, campaigning with terrorists who were not convicted [in October 2025, Mamdani posted on his social media a photo with imam Siraj Wahhaj, an unindicted coconspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombings], for example; that was on the cover of local newspapers in New York. So, the other thing that’s of interest is, New Yorkers know this. Mamdani barely got over 50 percent in a city where Democrats overwhelmingly outnumber Republicans. That shows that a number of Democrats, particularly Jewish New Yorkers, are very concerned about this radicalism and this pro-Hamas alliances that the current mayor of New York City has.

You’ve been very loyal to President Trump. Your supporters wanted you to be U.N. ambassador, and then they wanted you to be governor of New York. Shouldn’t Trump have pushed harder for these things also?

Well, first of all, we have a historically low margin in the House, and I’ve been proud to be the deciding vote on key issues delivering results for New Yorkers. That was a conversation I had with the president. Of course, I was honored to have been nominated, got overwhelming support, passing out of committee in the Senate, but as we’ve seen over the past year, it’s been a very challenging Congress. And in order to pass the largest tax cut in our nation’s history, I was the one vote, and I helped negotiate the largest tax cut, in terms of the raising of the state and local tax deduction. New Yorkers are filing their taxes literally right now as the book is coming out, and they’re seeing huge, huge tax cuts. I was proud to deliver that. I started the process of considering to run for New York, and then I made the decision that it was not the right time, politically, professionally and personally for my family. New York is a blue state traditionally, and you need to really have a perfect storm and a variety of issues. And another candidate who really doesn’t have a path toward winning decided to primary. I certainly would have won that primary and been the strongest candidate in the general election, but I have a 4-year-old. And while we have a very slim margin in Congress and my vote is needed there, I just made the decision, and I’ve gotten overwhelming support from New Yorkers who understand why I made that decision.

When you withdrew from the race, you said you wanted to focus on your son. I stayed home with my own kids, but I wasn’t the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. What went into your decision? Why now?

I won’t be staying home. People who are in elected office know that there are significant sacrifices for your families regarding safety, regarding time away from home. And I’ve been proud to serve in Congress. I also think these positions you should not be in forever. Some of the members of Congress have been in office for as long as I’ve alive and are just not productive. They’re not solving the issues for the country. I’m looking forward to new professional opportunities to use my expertise at the most senior level to help continue to lead on problems that I think are important for the country. This is one of them, higher education reform. But going back and forth-my son is in pre-K four right now. Having a little bit more consistency for our family life is important. These years you do not get back, and I think parents understand that. But I’ve been proud to lead by example, and I’ve been proud to deliver results for my district. And we’re excited about the opportunities ahead. I will tell you, though, that becoming a mom did make me, I think, a more effective member of Congress in terms of really speaking out on these education issues and how important that is for the next generation. But as you know-you’re a working mom-just talking about how you kind of made those decisions, there are seasons of life, and we are excited about this next season.

What do you have in mind for your next professional chapter? Is there anything specific you can share with us?

I’m excited to have this book in the world. This has been a three-year process going back to the hearing. It comes out April 14th, and there’s been a huge amount of interest. Over a billion people, remember, watched that hearing, the most viewed hearing in congressional history, more than Watergate, more than any other high-profile hearing. So there’s clearly an interest in this earthquake roiling through higher education. I also put forth solutions in the book, which I think are very important. I’m looking forward to making an announcement later on in the year for what comes next, but there are, as I said, lots of great opportunities to make an impact. And I’ve been proud of my record of results in Congress.



Read an excerpt from Elise Stefanik’s new book, Poisoned Ivies.

Newsweek's reporters and editors used Martyn, our Al assistant, to help produce this story. Learn more about Martyn.

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This story was originally published April 14, 2026 at 2:00 AM.