How the aftermath of Oct. 7 triggered a relatively quiet House committee

Republican Conference Chair and Harvard alum Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., said she was shocked when the presidents of her alma mater and two other universities created the "earthquake" that ignited one of the most watched congressional testimonies in recent times.

Stefanik's question -- does calling for the genocide of Jews constitute as hate speech on campus -- became the highlight of the Education and the Workforce Committee's Dec. 5 hearing with the presidents of Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, and MIT on combating antisemitism.

"I made it a moral question so that they would answer 'yes,'" Stefanik told ABC News, adding "And to the world's shock, they did not answer yes."

The Education Committee's antisemitism oversight kicked off a months-long crackdown on higher education with more than 10 university investigations, seven hearings and roundtables, the resignations of three Ivy League schools' presidents, and multiple congressional subpoenas that produced more than 40,000 pages of documents and key materials related to all alleged antisemitic acts or incidents at campuses across the country.

Monday marks the one-year anniversary of the Hamas attacks on Israel. Over the last 10 months, committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., has led the charge started by Stefanik to gut colleges of antisemitism at schools from California to Massachusetts. In the wake of the campus demonstrations and committee investigations, Foxx said Jewish students have the right to safety, dignity, and respect on campus and that she remains committed to holding schools accountable.

"Our goal was and is to make sure that Jewish students are safe on campus," Foxx told ABC News, adding, "All students should be safe on campus, but it was the Jewish students who were being threatened and harassed, and at times, assaulted. So we did our hearings with the goal of finding out what could be done to stop the students from being harassed and threatened."

Reports of antisemitism clouded the last school year. The wave of pro-Palestinian demonstrations included tent encampments, clashes with police, disrupted classes and, by last spring, canceled graduation ceremonies.

At Columbia University, an antisemitism task force found the school failed to stop hate on campus, calling the problem "serious" and "pervasive."

Jewish student Eden Yadegar said she was followed around by protesters brandishing sticks last year. Now she believes ignoring Jewish students is a "characteristic" of her school's administration.

At Harvard, Foxx's committee claims the university failed to discipline the majority of participants in what the committee is calling "antisemitic chaos." Showing the unprecedented nature of the antisemitism probes, subpoenas were sent to Harvard in February, which was the first time the committee had subpoenaed an entire university in its 157-year history, according to a source familiar. Columbia was also subpoenaed and its president resigned shortly before the 2024-2025 academic year.

Some schools have put in new policies and procedures in the wake of the protests. This summer, MIT leadership updated several policies related to free expression and demonstrations of all kinds, according to the school's website. The school now prohibits unauthorized takeovers, including encampments. In the University of Michigan's updated policies, the school wrote "an individual's right to protest must not infringe on the rights of others, endanger the community or disrupt the operations of the university."

Stefanik's push for campus crackdowns started last October with letters calling for the resignation of then-Harvard President Claudine Gay. The House also passed Stefanik's resolution that condemned antisemitism in November, but she credits Foxx for being the driving force pushing education issues to the top of the House's agenda. The investigations by Foxx, the Education Committee and simultaneous investigations by Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., prompted House Speaker Mike Johnson to take up the issue in the spring. He went to Columbia University with Foxx and other congressional leaders just days after massive demonstrations engulfed the campus. Later the probe became a House-wide investigation of 10 schools, including Harvard, Columbia, MIT, Michigan, and more.

"The antisemitism issue is not one that we anticipated being such a big issue," Johnson told ABC News. "You've seen college presidents change their positions and resign their posts and be terminated, and I think that was appropriate. But then you also see ongoing actions of Congress. We've deputized all of our committee chairs to look at the various avenues of the funding of these universities, the student visa programs, their tax-free endowments and all of that, and that's something that the public has deserved and demanded."

But the Education Committee has regular disagreements in the handling of college discrimination writ-large. Democratic Ranking Member Bobby Scott told ABC News in the committee's hearings and roundtables since Oct. 7 they have aggressively ignored Islamophobia and hate speech concerns coming from Muslim students.

"How do you say we're going to fight antisemitism without fighting racism, Islamophobia, homophobia, etcetera," Scott said, adding "I mean, I don't, I don't know how you do that."

Championing the issue of on campus safety, the committee's requests for thousands of probing documents influenced the House to pass three comprehensive "anti-woke" legislative packages last month. Several of those bills came from the committee, including the End Woke Higher Education Act, which pledges to rid U.S. colleges and universities of what the Republican majority calls the ballooning education bureaucracy and protect the First Amendment on campus.

Committee critics like Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, D-Ore., called the bill process a "colossal waste of time." It is likely to fail in the Senate.

"They can't even define what they mean by 'woke,'" Bonamici said, adding "It's just a term that they use to try to raise awareness for their culture war on higher education."