Late last year, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce began hearings on “the scourge of antisemitism on college campuses.” The committee’s most media-grabbing moments came during the first week of December, when the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and MIT bungled responses on how they would address antisemitism at their universities. In the aftermath, Penn President Liz Magill, and later, Harvard President Claudine Gay, both resigned.

While recent and clear instances of antisemitism have surfaced on U.S. campuses, many see these hearings as an attempt to attack critics of Israel and its months-long assault on Gaza and to demonize protesters who show solidarity with Palestinians. The hearings treated criticism of Zionism and Israeli actions as synonymous with antisemitism, despite the fact that many Jews share these criticisms.

Driving these investigations is the chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, Virginia Foxx, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives who represents North Carolina’s Fifth District. Foxx has held her office since 2005 and is currently running for her tenth term.

Foxx has long been a stalwart advocate of the Republican Party’s reactionary positions on everything from education policy to LGBTQ rights. Now she is weaponizing congressional hearings to serve the larger political aims of the GOP’s war on “woke campuses” and of her major donors, including AIPAC and prominent pro-Israel billionaires, who are rewarding her efforts with fundraisers and campaign contributions.

Foxx’s hearings were a charade full of exaggerations meant to score political points, garnering huge media attention while blocking out coverage of ongoing Israeli atrocities in Gaza. The university presidents who testified didn’t do themselves any favors with their clumsy responses that failed to challenge the assumptions of the questions they were asked: namely, that criticism of Zionism and support for Palestine are synonymous with antisemitism.

Foxx and the GOP have announced plans to investigate other universities for antisemitism, and to expand to other issues such as “exposing” the “true nature” of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, which they claim are “a cancer that resides in the hearts of American academic institutions” that are “sabotag[ing] our country’s fundamental values.” The committee will use subpoenas if needed.

Foxx’s hearings could help codify the misleading equation of real antisemitism against Jews — which must always be challenged — with legitimate criticism of the actions of the Israeli state, as well as play down the real threats of violence facing Palestinian and Muslim college students.

More broadly, Foxx is forging a template for an all out assault on universities, with levers of federal power in hand, using her position of influence to amplify the GOP’s war on universities through congressional hearings. As The New York Times put it, “House Republicans are now embarking on an aggressive and expansive investigation into institutions of higher education in America, targeting the academic elites they have long viewed as avatars of cultural decay — all in the name of combating antisemitism.”

Foxx has been an important player in the GOP’s far right lurch over the past two........

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