Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) described her upcoming book, Poisoned Ivies: The Inside Account of the Academic and Moral Rot at America’s Elite Universities, as being a “deep dive” into each of the elite universities in the United States.
During an interview on Breitbart News Saturday with host Breitbart News Washington bureau chief Matthew Boyle, Stefanik spoke about how many of the Ivy League universities were founded before the United States earned independence in 1776. Stefanik said that the Ivy League universities have “fundamentally lost their way.”
“People will remember the hearing heard around the world with university presidents from Harvard, Penn, and MIT, that really created an earthquake in higher education when I asked them a very direct, moral question: ‘Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate your university’s code of conduct?’ And, almost verbatim, they all answered, ‘It depends on the context.’”
“At that moment, it became the most viewed testimony in the history of the United States Congress. And it was a watershed moment in that it revealed not only the moral, but the academic rot happening at these institutions. Many of these quote-unquote elite institutions were founded even before our country’s founding — take the case of Harvard, founded in 1636, and they were founded upon American principles, and they fundamentally lost their way.”
“The book I’ve been working on for three years, it’s a deep dive at each of these institutions. And, it also highlights the important work that we’re doing with President Trump through executive action and legislatively, to rein in higher ed, to make sure that it’s focused on American values.”
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When Boyle pointed out that Democrats “ahead of the midterm elections, are trying to scare” Ivy League universities from “doing any future deals” or cooperating with the Trump administration on making changes, Stefanik said Democrats “have treated these institutions as an arm of their political ecosystem.”
“In my chapters on Harvard, I literally talk about how the Harvard Corporation, which is the board that oversees Harvard, are mostly Obama appointees from his cabinet. Barack Obama actually called the Harvard Corporation to urge them to keep Claudine Gay — this is despite her massive plagiarism scandal, that of course was revealed after the hearing,” Stefanik added.
“For so long, these institutions have been entitled to U.S. taxpayer dollars, and after this hearing, they failed to fix themselves. So, what did we do? We correctly worked with President Trump. On day one, a number of executive orders were issued; we got provisions in the most recent tax bill to rein in some of the tax incentives for these universities.”
Breitbart News Saturday airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Eastern.
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