StandWithUs Legal Testified Before the U.S. Senate HELP Committee on Campus Antisemitism

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Carly Gammill, StandWithUs Director of Legal Policy, was invited by the United States Senate HELP (Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions) Committee to testify in its hearing, titled "Antisemitic Disruptions on Campus: Ensuring Safe Learning Environments for All Students," on March 27, 2025. 

U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy, MD (R-LA), chair of the HELP Committee, is leading the Protecting Students on Campus Act, legislation that empowers students to file civil rights complaints if they experience violence or harassment on college campuses due to their heritage. 

Carly exposed the dangerous antizionist campaign to politicize Jewish identity as well as administrations’ continued practice of hiding behind the free speech clause to justify their failures to remedy the hostile environments on their campuses. She urged specific congressional intervention to hold administrations accountable and make our campuses safer for all students, including passage of the Antisemitism Awareness Act of 2025 and the Protecting Students on Campus Act.  

As Gammill explained, universities should no longer be allowed to hide behind freedom of speech. "Educational institutions are not public streets or sidewalks, and students cannot be allowed to engage in expressive activity wherever, however, and whenever they wish ... especially when such allowances ultimately contribute to hostile educational environments," she said.  

Gammill told the committee that one reason for the rampant antisemitism on campus is "a well-organized, well-funded campaign that has co-opted and imposed its own (erroneous) definition of a term that is integral to the religious and ethnic identity of most Jews around the world, including here in the U.S., with the clear intention of demonizing the term and those who identify with it. That term is 'Zionism' ... the term that describes the desire of the Jewish people for safety and sovereignty in their ancestral homeland of Israel. This nefarious campaign, however, seeks to re-define 'Zionism' as nothing more than a term of political support for the Israeli government, which the narrative falsely accuses of a host of evils." This campaign, she explained, is an "attempt to erase over 3,000 years of Jewish history and a direct attack against a core component of mainstream Jewish identity. In short, a textbook definition of antisemitism, just adapted and repackaged for a contemporary audience." 

StandWithUs is grateful to Chairman Cassidy for the invitation to participate in this important hearing. The panel included: Dr. Charles Asher Small, Founder and Director, Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism; Rabbi Levi Shemtov, Executive Vice President, American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad); Rabbi David Saperstein, Director Emeritus, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism; and Mr. Kenneth S. Stern, Director, Bard Center for the Study of Hate. 

Watch Carly Gammill's testimony: Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.

Watch her interview with NEWSNation given immediately following the testimony HERE.

Read coverage of the hearing in the Algemeiner,  New York Post, CBN, JNS, and Jewish Insider.  

For more information and to read Carly's testimony, click HERE.

Watch the entire over-two-hour hearing HERE.