Follow the Money Right to Republicans’ Faux Outrage Over “Antisemitism” on Campuses

Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash

Remember this past winter and spring, when a handful of Republican lawmakers seemed so concerned with rooting out antisemitism on college campuses in the midst of protests after the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel? So fierce was their outrage, they successfully pushed out University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill and Harvard President Claudine Gay.

So concerned were they about “the rot in America’s higher education,” as Rep. Elise Stefanik put it, they demanded education be “defunded”. Stefanik even co-authored a bill seeking to withdraw federal funding from universities that do not attempt to curtail students’ First-Amendment right to protest.

Well, it shouldn’t come as a shock all that faux outrage was exactly what political allies and for-profit university donors were paying for.

In a recent piece in The Guardian, Reps. Stefanik and Virginia Foxx “are the [for-profit college] industry’s strongest congressional supporters, frequently ‘doing their bidding’ by pushing controversial legislation and shielding for-profit schools that fail students from accountability, all while pulling in campaign donations.”

For-profit institutions like Keiser University and Hillsdale College have been accused of predatory practices, like promising students’ degrees intended to help them advance in the job market, but are in reality worthless, all the while enriching shareholders.

The now-defunct Trump University was one such “college”. The convicted felon ran a scam that stole from veterans for which he was ordered to pay a $25 million education fraud settlement (as a sitting president).

As The Guardian explains:

The industry is composed of schools that either are for-profit and have shareholders, or are formerly for-profit schools that became non-profits to evade regulations, but which still maintain relationships with for-profit entities.

A Guardian analysis of Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings and data from the nonpartisan nonprofit research group Open Secrets uncovered that Stefanik and Foxx have raked in over $300,000 from the for-profit education lobby, with Foxx — chair of the House education and labor…