The Hearing That Changed Everything - with Elise Stefanik

**Dan Senor** (0:00)
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**Elise Stefanik** (0:21)
You are listening to an Ark Media Podcast.
It was a realization to me as a policy maker, the only way these schools are going to have a wake up call is if you withhold federal funds, and boy did it wake them up. Boy, did they wake up and they start taking this situation seriously on campus. That only happened because of the withholding of federal funds.

**Dan Senor** (0:57)
It's 9 a.m. on Friday, August 14th in New York City. It's 4 p.m. on Friday, August 14th in Israel. As Israelis, get ready to wind down for Shabbat. Before today's episode, a quick housekeeping note. On Thursday, October 22nd, just five days ahead of the Israeli elections, Call Me Back will hold a live taping at the Streikers Center in New York City, where I'll sit down with Dan Shapiro, Dahlia Scheinlin and Brett Stevens to discuss what's at stake in Israel's 2026 election and what its results will mean for the U.S.-Israel relationship. Tickets have just gone on sale, so if you want to join us, please follow the link in the episode description. Now on to today's episode. On December 5th, 2023, three of the most powerful university presidents in America sat before Congress and were asked a simple question. Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate your school's code of conduct? The answers they gave, hedged, lawyered and morally hollow, became one of the most watched congressional moments in years. The congresswoman who asked the question was Elise Stefanik of New York. She has since written a book about what she found when she kept pulling that thread. It's called Poisoned Ivies, and it argues that what happened in that hearing room should not have been a surprise. It was the inevitable product of decades of ideological capture, governance failure and foreign money flooding America's elite universities.
Since we recorded this conversation, that fight has continued to play out, including in the courts just days ago, a federal judge dismissed the Trump administration's lawsuit accusing Harvard of failing to protect Jewish and Israeli students, ruling that the incidents cited by the government were too isolated and episodic to establish an ongoing violation of federal civil rights law. The decision adds another dimension to a question that was already central to our conversation. That is, even if elite universities have badly failed their Jewish students, how far should the federal government go in trying to force them to change? At the same time, we have also seen numerous universities take steps to address the problems that Congresswoman Stefanik, her congressional colleagues, and the Trump administration had identified. That is, they are overhauling and in some cases even shutting down entirely their DEI programs, clamping down on anti-Semitism on their campuses and a range of other actions. Is it enough? How did our universities even get to this crisis? And how does Elise Stefanik respond to some critics who ask hard questions like whether the cure might have been as dangerous as the disease? By tackling the crisis of higher education, serving in house leadership and her work in other areas, including the House Intelligence Committee, Elise Stefanik has certainly made her mark in Congress. Our conversation about higher education right after this short break.
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Elise Stefanik, thanks for being here.

**Elise Stefanik** (4:44)
Great to be with you, Dan. I'm a listener to this podcast and really honored to join you today.

**Dan Senor** (4:50)
I know you are because you send me messages when there's a particular episode that moves you. The most recent one which moved me too was the one with Rachel Goldberg-Poland, who I know you have gotten to know a little bit.

**Elise Stefanik** (5:01)
Yes.

**Dan Senor** (5:02)
For very sad reasons, over the last several years, she's actually mentioned you to me as well in a separate conversation. My conversations with her have been some of the most meaningful episodes we've done these last few years.