{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://smucker.house.gov/media/press-releases/smucker-comments-rise-antisemitism-education", "Smucker Comments on Rise of Antisemitism in Education", "2023-11-16", "2023", "2023-11", "Republican", "House", "PA", "Lloyd Smucker", "S001199", "smucker.house.gov", "smucker", "https://smucker.house.gov/media/press-releases", "scraper", "Washington\u2014Rep. Lloyd Smucker (PA-11) is speaking out against the rise in antisemitic acts witnessed across America at colleges and universities, as well as in middle and high schools. Smucker reiterated his support for Israel and its right to defend itself from the barbaric terrorist actions of Hamas, and asked witnesses about antisemitism during recent committee hearings.\n\nThe Higher Education and Workforce Development Subcommittee of the Education & the Workforce Committee, held a hearing on Tuesday entitled \u201cCONFRONTING THE SCOURGE OF ANTISEMITISM ON CAMPUS.\u201d\n\nClick here to watch Rep. Smucker\u2019s comments and questions from the Higher Education and Workforce Development Subcommittee hearing.\n\nRep. Smucker said \u201cIt is shocking to see what\u2019s happening in our society, what\u2019s happening on our campuses. There\u2019s something wrong with the moral fabric of our society when you have antisemitism rising in the way we are seeing today.\u201d\n\nSmucker asked Rabbi Moshe Hauer, Executive Vice President of the Orthodox Union, \u201cwhat is going wrong beginning in our K-12 system that we are at the point we are today?\u201d\n\nRabbi Hauer responded: \u201cwhat we have seen very clearly is that the kinds of behaviors and the kinds of environments that have been created on university campuses, which until very recently we only found in university campuses, we are now finding in K-12 or specifically middle school through 12th (grade) environments.\u201d Rabbi Hauer noted how incidents of antisemitism have impacted Jewish Student Union clubs in middle and schools across the country.\n\nThe House Ways & Means Committee held a hearing on Wednesday entitled: \u201cFrom Ivory Towers to Dark Corners: Investigating the Nexus Between Antisemitism, Tax-Exempt Universities, and Terror Financing.\u201d\n\nSmucker began his comments, stating: \u201cThere is no equivalency between what Hamas did, the horrific attacks and Israel defending itself. And I think it is important that is said\u2026 And so we stand with Israel and Israel\u2019s right to defend itself.\u201d In his comments, Smucker mentioned a recent antisemitic vandalism which occurred at Millersville University in Lancaster County.\n\nSmucker asked Dr. Jonathan Schanzer, Senior Vice President of Research, Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), if Congress should be concerned about foreign investments in universities from nations who don\u2019t share our democratic values and what steps we should take to ensure college endowments aren\u2019t investing in countries which actively oppose the United States.\n\nDr. Schanzer responded by noting instances of significant direct investment in colleges from foreign nations and said \u201cwe don\u2019t know what the countries are receiving in return. And that\u2019s a huge problem. We need to see the contracts, we need to see what the universities agreed to in order to receive those funds. And it\u2019s not happening. The Department of Education is actually woefully behind in tracking these disclosures.\u201d", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-08T01:01:09Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://smucker.house.gov/media/press-releases/smucker-comments-rise-antisemitism-education"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.6269581392407417, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}