Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., called on President Biden to visit Columbia University as students there and at colleges across the country hold demonstrations in protest of Israel’s war in Gaza.
Johnson led House GOP leaders and the chairs of six top committees in a press conference announcing a wide-ranging congressional probe into instances of antisemitism at those demonstrations.
“Yes, I do,” Johnson said when asked if he thinks Biden should go to the New York City Ivy League. Johnson himself visited the school last week, addressing anti-Israel agitators at a public press conference after meeting with Jewish students who have said they feel unsafe on campus amid the demonstrations.
Johnson said he connected with the White House soon after that visit.
House Speaker Mike Johnson dared President Biden to visit Columbia University. (Getty Images)
“In fact, after we left the campus, I made a call to senior policy advisers in the White House. The president was on the road as I was, and we did not connect immediately. But I’ve encouraged him to go and see it for himself,” he said.
Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for a response.
Earlier Tuesday, White House spokesman Andrew Bates released a statement condemning Columbia student protesters’ takeover of a campus building called Hamilton Hall.
“President Biden has stood against repugnant, antisemitic smears and violent rhetoric his entire life. He condemns the use of the term ‘intifada,’ as he has the other tragic and dangerous hate speech displayed in recent days,” Bates said. “President Biden respects the right to free expression, but protests must be peaceful and lawful. Forcibly taking over buildings is not peaceful – it is wrong. And hate speech and hate symbols have no place in America.”
It comes as college campuses around the country are seeing a wave of anti-Israel demonstrations that sparked when Columbia University students and those at their sister school, Barnard College, were arrested for setting up an encampment on the Manhattan Ivy League’s grounds. The protests, done in opposition to Columbia’s investments in companies with Israeli ties, have continued since then.
The committees involved are Education & the Workforce, Energy & Commerce, Oversight, the Judiciary, Ways & Means and the committee on Science, Space & Technology.
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Students march on Columbia University campus in support of a protest encampment supporting Palestinians on April 29. (REUTERS/David Dee Delgado)
The investigation is an expansion of the probe being led by Education & Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx, R-N.C.
Foxx announced a new hearing on the matter on May 23 in her own remarks during the press conference. She invited officials from Yale University, University of California at Los Angeles, and the University of Michigan to testify, she said.
House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., who is on the same committee, said during the press conference, “Enough is enough. It is time to restore, restore law and order, academic integrity and moral decency to America’s higher education institutions. Joe Biden has been deafeningly silent.”
The other committees will be focusing on parts of the investigation relevant to their panels’ work.
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House Education & Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx said her panel would hold another hearing on antisemitism on college campuses next month. (Samuel Corum/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
A spokesperson for the Energy & Commerce Committee, for example, told Fox News Digital that Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., would look into taxpayer-funded National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants that go to colleges and universities.
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House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., indicated his panel would look into where the nationwide protests’ funding was coming from – suggesting he suspected a coordinated effort.
“It appears global elites are funding these hateful protests and pop up tent cities. These are the same groups that fund other radical agendas, including diminishing America’s energy production and pushing soft on crime policies that harm the American people,” Comer said. “The House Oversight Committee will follow the money trail, expose it to the American people, and seek to hold bad actors funding hate accountable.”
