Columbia University President Minouche Shafik and the school's board of trustees must get control of the pro-Palestinian protesters camping there, as the "inmates are in charge of the asylum," Rep. Virginia Foxx, who was on the campus last week with a House delegation led by Speaker Mike Johnson, told Newsmax on Sunday.
"The Jewish students there, some of them are not even able to stay on campus," the North Carolina Republican told Newsmax's "Sunday Report." "They can't study. They feel threatened for their lives… a lot of taxpayer dollars are going into Columbia, and we think that should be a safe environment for all students, but particularly the Jewish students."
Foxx added that she does not know why school officials are negotiating with the protesters.
"Just tell the students to pack up their tents and leave," she said.
Foxx, unlike other lawmakers, has not yet called on Shafik to resign and told Newsmax that she's reluctant to make that call as her committee is still gathering information.
Meanwhile, the university has said it will not bring in the New York Police Department again concerning the situation, and Foxx said that's a mistake.
"The president brought them in once, and evidently, she got a lot of pushback, particularly from faculty," she said. "It was the first time that the police had been on the campus, uh, since the 1960s. They have no police on the campus. They have a security force. They're not allowed to touch anybody. They're not allowed to arrest anyone. They don't wear guns."
Still, she said that exchanging one president for another at Columbia won't necessarily change the situation.
"We need a person with backbone," Foxx said. "I've said that over and over again. Very few of these college presidents have any backbone. They won't make a decision. They're scared of their shadow. They don't know what the faculty is going to do."
Meanwhile, the situation isn't fair to students, said Foxx, adding that she doubts there will be commencement exercises at Columbia this year.
"Many of these students came through the COVID problem," she said. "They didn't get to graduate from high school, and now many of them won't be able to graduate from college, which is a big event for people. So this is totally unfair to the other students."
The school leaders, though, aren't coming up with consequences for the bad actions that have happened, said Foxx.
"You cannot allow a small group of students to ruin the lives of the majority of the students there at Columbia, and that's where I think the administration is making a mistake," she said. "You can't kowtow to a minority and then not have consequences for the administration."
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