Uploaded April 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Two years ago, in the wake of burgeoning antisemitism after Hamas’s October 7 attacks, Elise Stefanik sat across from the presidents of Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Pennsylvania and asked them a simple question: Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate your university’s code of conduct? Their non-answers—“it depends on the context”—shocked the country. A billion people watched the clip in a week. For me, and for students who had actually attended these schools and saw the way rising antisemitism on campus had been ignored, their responses weren’t surprising at all.
Since then, President Donald Trump has made university accountability central to his term—the federal government has withheld hundreds of millions in funding from those institutions that have not complied. University presidents have resigned. Columbia University reached a $221 million settlement with the Trump administration. The Department of Justice filed lawsuits. Alumni closed their wallets. And yet, much of the “moral rot” remains.
Stefanik, who is stepping down from Congress after this term and has a new book out about far-left indoctrination on A-list campuses, Poisoned Ivies: The Inside Account of the Academic and Moral Rot at America’s Elite Universities, sat down with me to talk about all of it: what the hearings actually fixed, what they didn’t, and why she believes these institutions had their chance to reform themselves and blew it. We also talked about why she dropped out of the New York governor’s race—despite leading in the polls—and what that says about the state of the Republican Party in New York.
Stefanik has been a harsh critic of New York mayor Zohran Mamdani, calling him a “socialist” and “jihadist.” I asked her what she thinks about his first 100 days as mayor, including the fake museum his team created that showcased his Taco Bell leftovers. I also asked her what she thinks about the strange spectacle of Trump hosting Mamdani in the Oval Office and calling him “a rational person”—which Stefanik insists is not an alliance. We talked about why support for Israel is fracturing on both the left and the right, whether voices like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens represent a real ideological shift in the Republican Party or an overstated fringe, and why Vice President J.D. Vance hasn’t condemned them.
And we talked about what comes next—for higher education, for the Republican Party, and for Stefanik herself, who insists she’s not done fighting even after she leaves the Hill.
Two years ago, in the wake of burgeoning antisemitism after Hamas’s October 7 attacks, Elise Stefanik sat across from the presidents of Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Pennsylvania and asked them a simple question: Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate your university’s code of conduct? Their non-answers—“it depends on the context”—shocked the country. A billion people watched the clip in a week. For me, and for students who had actually attended these schools and saw the way rising antisemitism on campus had been ignored, their responses weren’t surprising at all.
Since then, President Donald Trump has made university accountability central to his term—the federal government has withheld hundreds of millions in funding from those institutions that have not complied. University presidents have resigned. Columbia University reached a $221 million settlement with the Trump administration. The Department of Justice filed lawsuits. Alumni closed their wallets. And yet, much of the “moral rot” remains.
Stefanik, who is stepping down from Congress after this term and has a new book out about far-left indoctrination on A-list campuses, Poisoned Ivies: The Inside Account of the Academic and Moral Rot at America’s Elite Universities, sat down with me to talk about all of it: what the hearings actually fixed, what they didn’t, and why she believes these institutions had their chance to reform themselves and blew it. We also talked about why she dropped out of the New York governor’s race—despite leading in the polls—and what that says about the state of the Republican Party in New York.
Stefanik has been a harsh critic of New York mayor Zohran Mamdani, calling him a “socialist” and “jihadist.” I asked her what she thinks about his first 100 days as mayor, including the fake museum his team created that showcased his Taco Bell leftovers. I also asked her what she thinks about the strange spectacle of Trump hosting Mamdani in the Oval Office and calling him “a rational person”—which Stefanik insists is not an alliance. We talked about why support for Israel is fracturing on both the left and the right, whether voices like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens represent a real ideological shift in the Republican Party or an overstated fringe, and why Vice President J.D. Vance hasn’t condemned them.
And we talked about what comes next—for higher education, for the Republican Party, and for Stefanik herself, who insists she’s not done fighting even after she leaves the Hill.
