Education Secretary Miguel Cardona refused on Tuesday to commit to barring pro-Palestinian student protesters who harassed or intimidated others from having their federal student loans canceled.
Cardona testified before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, covering a variety of contentious topics regarding the Department of Education, including campus antisemitism, the botched Free Application for Federal Student Aid rollout, the controversial Title IX overhaul, and the student loan debt transfer scheme.
“You’ve been proudly volunteering the taxpayers to take on the student loan debt of largely wealthy college graduates,” committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) told Cardona. “Do you believe that students who spend their time in college calling for the destruction of an ethnic or religious group, or spend their time preventing students of particular ethnic or religious groups from walking around campus freely, or spending time occupying campus buildings, deserve to have their education paid for by taxpayers?”
Cardona would not commit to blocking students from accessing the taxpayer debt transfer scheme but said that “students who are breaking the law and are disrupting the educational environment should be held to account.”
“I believe it’s important that all students have access to their higher education classes and graduation,” Cardona said, adding that he is “committed to making sure that campuses are safe. I condemn any form of hate, or any violence on campus.”
The inquiry from Foxx came as unlawful encampments of pro-Palestinian protesters have been embedded on college campuses for weeks. While some schools have only recently decided to bring police in to clear the encampments as graduation ceremonies approach, some of the protests have been characterized by harassment, intimidation, and disruption of students going to class.
Republicans have been slamming the Biden administration’s attempts to transfer student loan debt to taxpayers, criticizing it for forcing people without college degrees to pay for the elite degrees of others. The matter has become more contentious amid the campus protests, with critics questioning whether students who have shown deep disdain for the United States should receive a free college education at the expense of taxpayers.
“Over the past seven months, colleges across the nation have seen an unprecedented regression in moral and institutional legitimacy as antisemitism and pro-Hamas protests have engulfed campuses,” Foxx said during the Tuesday hearing. “Turn on the news, and universities such as Columbia and UCLA look like unrecognizable war zones.”
Foxx also reiterated her February call for Cardona to resign after he “refused even to say that the ‘From the river to the sea’ chant is antisemitic,” arguing he is “unfit for public office.”
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The Department of Education has opened more than 100 new Title VI discrimination investigations related to campus protests and activities since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack that spurred Israel’s war in Gaza, according to Cardona. The education secretary invoked President Joe Biden, saying, “There should be no place on any campus, no place in America for antisemitism or threats of violence against Jewish students. There is no place for hate speech or violence of any kind.”
“Make no mistake, antisemitism is discrimination and is prohibited by Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” Cardona added. “Dissent is essential to democracy, but dissent must never lead to disorder or to denying the rights of others so students can finish their semester and their college education. Hate has no place on college campuses.”