UPenn begins turning over documents in House committee's anti-Semitism investigation
In its request letter, the committee cited Campus Reform's reporting, which highlighted a professor at the university who helped tear down posters featuring Israeli hostages.
The University of Pennsylvania has begun turning over documents to a Congressional committee concerning its investigation into anti-Semitism on several college campuses.
A spokesperson for the House Committee on Education and the Workforce confirmed to Campus Reform it has received documents from the University of Pennsylvania and is reviewing them.
Foxx initially gave the university a Wednesday deadline to submit the documents. In a Jan. 24 letter to the University of Pennsylvania, Rep. Dr. Virginia Foxx requested the following documents:
- ”All reports of antisemitic acts or incidents and related documents and communications since January 1, 2021, including but not limited to all reports of antisemitic acts, incidents, or discrimination
- All documents and communications relating to or reflecting sources of funding for Penn Students Against the Occupation, the Palestine Writes Festival, and the Freedom School for Palestine, including but not limited to university, departmental, faculty, and student organization funds, as well as foreign donations;
- All documents and communications since January 1, 2021, referring and relating to antisemitism, involving the Penn Board of Trustees
- All documents and communications referring and relating to Penn’s Action Plan to Combat Antisemitism;”
[RELATED: UPenn faculty block building during ‘die-in’ to honor ‘Gazans murdered by Israel’]
In total, Foxx sent the University of Pennsylvania 25 different requests for documents relating to anti-Semitism on campus.
A spokesperson for the University of Pennsylvania told CNN it planned a “rolling production” in submitting the documents to the committee over the next several weeks.
”Penn’s failure to address antisemitism on its campus has been harshly and widely rebuked. … In defense of this disgraceful record, Penn has cited its supposed commitment to free speech,” Foxx wrote in the letter. “However, Penn has demonstrated a clear double standard by tolerating antisemitic vandalism, harassment, and intimidation, but suppressing and penalizing other expression it deemed problematic.”
In the letter, Foxx cited Campus Reform’s reporting, which highlighted a professor at the university who helped tear down posters featuring Israeli hostages.
[RELATED: UPenn’s interim president condemns ‘antisemitic’ cartoons by lecturer as ‘reprehensible’]
Foxx also cited several instances of alleged anti-Semitism on the University of Pennsylvania campus, including one instance where Associate Professor of Arabic Literature Huda Fakhreddine posted the following to X in Arabic on Oct. 7: “while we were asleep, Palestine invented a new way of life.”
In a later protest on Oct. 16, Fakhreddine said “Israel is the epitome of antisemitism … it desecrates the memory of the Holocaust victims. It humiliates every Jewish person,” according to The Algemeiner.
