Washington, D.C. – In case you missed it, House Republican Conference Chairwoman and senior member of the House Education and the Workforce Committee Elise Stefanik joined CBS’s Nikole Killion to discuss the congressional investigation into the pervasive antisemitism in K-12 education and her questioning of New York City Department of Education Chancellor David Banks.
Watch her full interview here.
View highlights from her interview below.
On Investigations into K-12 Schools:
“It's a crisis in some of our public schools as well. You saw the tough questioning I had for the Chancellor of the New York City public school system, where you have antisemitic attacks against teachers, against Jewish students, and a lack of accountability. So it's not just a higher-ed crisis. We are seeing it in K-12 as well. And it's our responsibility as Members of Congress, we need to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars to hold these institutions accountable when there's a failure of leadership. Now, I'll tell you the hearings are important because they do deliver accountability where it has been slow walked by their elected officials, like in the case of the Mayor of D.C., where it took the night before the hearing for them to clear out a pro-Hamas encampment at GW. So the hearings matter in terms of accountability.”
On Congressional Hearings to Hold University Presidents and Elected Officials Accountable:
“There are going to continue to be hearings on a lot of this crisis. The next group of schools we have coming in are Northwestern, UCLA, and Michigan where there's been a failure of leadership. But it shouldn't take a Congressional hearing for elected officials, the D.C. Mayor, or university presidents to do the right thing to ensure safety and security for students, particularly for Jewish students who have been under attack, to condemn antisemitism. But if it takes a Congressional hearing, we'll continue to hold them accountable because that's a specific result we've been able to deliver.”
On Holding K-12 School Principals Accountable for Antisemitism:
“You know, I think, in the case of where there is a failure of the principals to deliver accountability, there needs to be, not just a shifting them to another part of the Department of Education, they need to be fired. They, again, are paid for by taxpayer dollars in the state of New York and in the city of New York in this case. So it's not just enough to move them to another entity. They need to be fired, and that was not done in this case.”
###
