‘THIS IS NOT HARD’: PA Senate candidate McCormick wants to revoke tax-free endowments of schools that let anti-Semitism run wild

Republican Pennsylvania U.S. Senate Candidate Dave McCormick recently said that the tax-exempt status of university and college endowments, as well as their accreditation, should be revoked if they do not effectively combat anti-Semitism on their campuses.

While campaigning, McCormick said: “This is not hard . . . there’s lots of hard choices, this is not a hard choice for me. This is something where I’ll be a strong voice for what we need to do as America to eradicate the evil, stand by our closest ally of Israel, and eradicate anti-Semitism at home starting with our campuses.”

[RELATED: GOP reps target skyrocketing tuition with tax hike on university endowments]

This would include “firing all of them who can’t stand up to the hatred on campuses . . . squeezing the purse strings. If you can’t stamp out anti-Semitism on your campuses, you should not have tax-free status for your $50 billion endowment. You should not be eligible for federal grants, you should not be able to receive the accreditation. . . we can target this on day one.”

Breaking: Dave McCormick, Pennsylvania Senate Candidate, calls out universities who cannot call out antisemitism and says they should be defunded.

“If you can’t stamp out antisemitism on your campus, you should not have tax free status.” pic.twitter.com/W7vHMzKBY0

— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) October 29, 2024

McCormick’s comments elicited applause from the audience. 

The failure of many schools to stop anti-Semitism following widespread protests after Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre has not gone unnoticed, and others besides McCormick have also turned a critical eye to these institutions’ endowments. 

Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.), who serves as Chair for the House Ways and Means Committee, published a letter on Jan. 10 that threatened several universities that their tax exemptions could be taken away due to their “disappointing” responses to anti-Semitic protests on their campuses. Specifically, the letter was sent to the heads of the Universities of Harvard, Pennsylvania, Cornell, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

[RELATED: Harvard endowment contributions fall by $150 million following campus turmoil]

Several universities have already lost major donors who criticized them for not doing enough to fight anti-Semitism, including the Universities of Pennsylvania, Harvard, and Columbia. 

Campus Reform has reached out to Dave McCormick’s campaign for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.