Republican presidential candidates are grappling with how to stem the tide of campus antisemitism that reared its ugly head after Hamas terrorists slaughtered 1,400 Israelis in a surprise attack earlier this month.
The proposals put forward by the various candidates range in severity from rhetorical wrist slaps to the muscular use of government to strip funding from university groups that praise Hamas or even to deport foreign students who have publicly endorsed the terror group.
Senator Tim Scott (R., S.C.) said it was “devastating to see people in our own country marching and celebrating an absolute terrorist organization for the annihilation of our Jewish brothers and sisters.”
“And I gotta tell you, if any of those students on college campuses are foreign nationals on a visa, they should be sent back to their country,” Scott told The Sean Hannity Show last week. “Anyone who stands up and who says they want to kill Jews, they support terrorism. They should have that visa revoked.”
Ron DeSantis is calling to deport foreign students who are “out there celebrating terrorism.” The Florida governor vowed that, if elected, he would “cancel their visas and send them home.”
Former president Donald Trump also said that, if elected again, he would revoke the student visas of “radical, anti-American and antisemitic foreigners.”
In a statement to NR, Nikki Haley spokesman Ken Farnaso said the former South Carolina governor would also support revoking visas, along with other measures to combat antisemitism on campus.
“Make no mistake: Anti-Zionism is antisemitism and we need to root out this poison spreading across our campuses,” Farnaso said. “As President, Nikki will cut federal funds to schools that don’t crack down on antisemitism and anti-Zionism, investigate the funders of pro-Hamas student groups, deny and cancel visas for terrorist sympathizers, tackle DEI programs that have become hotbeds of antisemitism, among many other proposals.”
Haley noted in a post on X on Tuesday that she was the first governor to have signed anti-BDS legislation during her time as South Carolina governor.
The idea of deporting Hamas sympathizers seems to have originated in the Senate with Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), who said the Biden administration should rescind visas of foreign nationals who defend or support Hamas, and Senator Tom Cotton (R., Ark.), who said the Department of Homeland Security should deport foreign nationals who express support for Hamas.
The Biden administration dismissed the idea when asked about the proposals by RealClearPolitics White House correspondent Philip Wegmann.
“I would just tell you that you don’t have to agree with every sentiment that is expressed in a free country like this to stand by the First Amendment and the idea of peaceful protest,” said John Kirby, the coordinator for strategic communications at the National Security Council.
DeSantis’s press secretary, Jeremy Redfern, defended the governor’s position against critics on X, saying, “I know this is a tough concept for you to grasp so I’ll explain it in as few words as possible: They have a right to free speech. They don’t have a right to be in the United States.”
DeSantis’s administration also directed Florida universities to deactivate chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine that express support for Hamas’s terror attacks.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) came out against the DeSantis administration’s policy in a statement arguing that state government cannot force public colleges to de-recognize the student clubs.
“There’s no indication from the chancellor’s letter that any action from Florida’s Students for Justice in Palestine groups went beyond expression fully protected by the First Amendment,” the group said. “This directive is a dangerous — and unconstitutional — threat to free speech. If it goes unchallenged, no one’s political beliefs will be safe from government suppression.”
Scott, meanwhile, led a group of Republican senators in introducing the Stop Antisemitism on College Campuses Act, which would rescind federal education funding for colleges and universities that peddle antisemitism or authorize, fund, or facilitate events that promote violent antisemitism.
A press release for the bill cites marches and rallies held in coordination with Students for Justice in Palestine — a group that has called the Hamas attack “a historic win for the Palestinian resistance” — at Georgetown University, Columbia University, UCLA, and NYU. Other examples include Cornell University history professor Russell Rickford calling the Hamas terror attacks “exhilarating” and “exciting,” and Joseph Massad, a professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia, calling Hamas’s actions “astounding” and “incredible.”
Other 2024 candidates seemed reluctant to speak out one way or another on the prospect of revoking visas but were on board for canceling funding to universities that fail to stamp out antisemitism.
Conservative radio host Larry Elder told National Review that now is a “good time to reconsider the role of the federal government in funding higher education.”
North Dakota governor Doug Burgum wrote in a post on X, “It’s clear that too many universities encourage anti-Israel sentiment on their campuses and many donors are now finally waking up to that fact. As Governor, our administration has enacted anti-BDS legislation, and as president, I will continue supporting Israel and fighting against anti-Israel radicalism. Title 6 prohibits federal funding for any college or university that enables anti-Semitism. I will fully enforce this law.”
Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie’s campaign directed me to comments he made on NH Radio with Drew Cline when asked about college donors and employers pushing back against antisemitism on campus.
“I think it’s overdue to be pushing back,” Christie said. “My concern is even more about the administrations of these universities who in the statements they made afterwards appeared to me to be so anti-Israel and anti-Jewish. I think that that’s an awful, awful example to set. That’s the kind of thing they’re teaching in a lot of our colleges and universities.”
“I think it’s an appropriate time for all of us to push back on what’s being done there, because it sets the tone in this country of intolerance,” Christie said. “And I don’t believe that the universities are there to do it. I think it’s supposed to be the exact opposite.”
In other campaign-related news, the Scott campaign announced this week that it plans to go “all in on Iowa,” doubling its staff on the ground and opening a new West Des Moines headquarters. Scott plans to travel to the Hawkeye State every week ahead of the caucus as the campaign shifts resources from New Hampshire to Iowa, where the campaign sees “an opportunity and wide-open evangelical lane to win the Iowa Republican caucus.”
Campaign manager Jennifer DeCasper said in a statement: “As the candidate with the highest net favorables, Tim Scott is best positioned to compete on caucus day. No candidate other than Tim Scott has the resources, the foundation of support, and the message to be successful in the Hawkeye State. We’re all in on Iowa as an important first step on the road to winning the nomination.”
Scott sits in fourth place in Iowa, according to a polling average from FiveThirtyEight, with 5.8 percent support. Trump leads the pack with 50.3 percent support, followed by DeSantis at 17.7 percent and Haley at 10.4 percent.
Around NR
• Dan McLaughlin analyzes a swing-state poll that shows the depth of Biden’s 2024 problems.
Democrats shouldn’t get cocky. Even if they draw their desired opponent in Trump, Biden is now struggling so badly in key swing states that he may yet be vulnerable even to Republicans’ weakest candidate. That’s the lesson of a Morning Consult poll released Thursday, covering Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — the seven closest states in 2020, which include the four closest states in 2016. Trump leads Biden in five of the seven states and is tied in Michigan, trailing only in Nevada. Aggregating across all seven states, Trump leads 47 percent to 43 percent, and leads among men, women, and every age bracket.
• Christian Schneider warns that Nikki Haley’s “bipolar campaign will continue to hamper her”:
TradCons will continue to groan at her olive branches to Trump World, and Trump will continue to turn his followers against her. (His most recent attack was to call her a “birdbrain,” a term that gained momentum in the comic strips of the 1940s.)
• Ahead of the 2024 election, Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections (RITE) is working toward that goal by fighting in the country’s courts to “defend attacks on mechanisms that state legislatures put in place to ensure the integrity of the election, to safeguard the ballot, to promote trust and confidence in the election, and to elevate the quality of the electoral process.” More from me here.
• Zach Kessel goes inside Haley’s push to halt taxpayer funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees during her time as U.S. ambassador to the U.N.
“Ambassador Haley’s perspective on all of this was to investigate, to get access to the textbooks that were being used in these facilities,’” Carrie Filipetti, executive director of the Vandenberg Coalition and former senior policy adviser to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations (USUN), told NR, “and it really did bear out that this was promoting hatred, violence, and terrorism.”