Northwestern University knew about the anti-Israel leanings of Medill School of Journalism Assistant Professor Steven Thrasher but went ahead and "hired him anyway" because his views squared with the administration's ideology, Rep. Carlos Gimenez, R-Fla., told Newsmax on Thursday.
"Can you imagine the journalists that are coming out of Northwestern University if this is the individual that's teaching them?" Gimenez told Thursday's "Wake Up America." "If I were the president of Northwestern, he would be fired; he would have been fired a long time ago.
"That should not be the values of Northwestern University; it shouldn't be the values of any university here in the United States. But yet we see it over and over again that these very liberal presidents, woke presidents, won't do anything against the radical faculty that they're employing."
Thrasher was openly supportive of the anti-Israel student encampment at Northwestern, even participating in forming a barrier last month to prevent campus police from entering the area the protesters had taken over.
Gimenez said that Jewish students "don't feel safe" on college campuses due to the anti-Israel protests that have engulfed academic life in recent weeks, adding "they shouldn't feel safe on those campuses."
Balancing the needs of Jewish students to feel safe and the First Amendment rights of anti-Israel protesters is "not hard to do," according to Gimenez.
"You just say, 'No, we'll protect your right to free speech, we'll protect your right to protest, but you'll do it our way; you won't take over our campus; we won't allow you to intimidate students; you have to abide by our rules of conduct,'" he said. "But apparently, those rules of conduct only apply if you are from the right.
"If you're from the left, you can do just about anything you want to do and get away with it. Why? Because they have a sympathetic ear with these university presidents. They're the ones that hired these people, right? They're the ones that hired this guy [at Northwestern]. And what? You didn't know that this guy was a radical when you hired him?
"Of course they knew he was a radical. They knew his writings, his teachings and everything, and they hired him anyway."
When asked what he is looking for from the Thursday House Education committee hearing on college antisemitism, Gimenez said he expects, Rep. "Elise Stefanik [R-N.Y.] to take them down, put them on the spot, just like she did with the presidents of MIT and Harvard and Columbia."
The presidents of Northwestern and Rutgers University, as well as the chancellor of the University of California Los Angeles and the secretary and CEO of the Phi Beta Kappa Society were slated to testify before the panel.
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Nicole Weatherholtz ✉
Nicole Weatherholtz, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
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