Source: Politics<\/p>\n
Shortly after she pressed three university presidents at a December hearing on whether calling for the genocide of Jews constituted campus harassment, Rep. Elise Stefanik<\/a> went on a fundraising blitz, pleading with supporters to \u201cturn up the heat on these \u2018woke\u2019 liberal presidents even further.\u201d<\/p>\n The rush to capitalize on the much ballyhooed hearing proved successful: Stefanik (R-N.Y.) saw a record fundraising haul.<\/p>\n It has also opened up a new front for Washington\u2019s influence industry. In campaigns, on K Street and in Congress, the machinery of the city has cashed in on the fight against perceived liberal bias on campus, as colleges have turned to consultants or lawyers to navigate the increasingly unforgiving landscape. This month, the PR firm Marathon Strategies, which launched a higher education crisis communications practice after the hearing, will run a so-called bootcamp for colleges and universities hoping to keep themselves out of similar spotlights.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s blood in the water on the sector as a whole,\u201d said Christopher Armstrong, a partner at the law firm Holland & Knight who co-chairs its congressional investigations practice. Issues around higher education have new \u201cpolitical salience,\u201d he said, emphasizing that the risk to universities extends beyond just antisemitism and has been percolating for some time.<\/p>\n Columbia University\u2019s president and Board of Trustees co-chairs are set to testify this month before the House Education and the Workforce Committee, which held the December hearing, on their own university\u2019s handling of antisemitism on campus. But lawmakers who don\u2019t sit on that committee are also scrutinizing higher education.<\/p>\n Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee, which oversees the tax code, have pushed their own investigation into antisemitism on college campuses in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. Chair Jason Smith<\/a> (R-Mo.) has raised the specter that universities failing to protect Jewish students may lose their tax-exempt status.<\/p>\n \u201cA large number of universities who have not in the past paid a lot of attention to what\u2019s happening in terms of D.C. politics are now, because they see the risks,\u201d said Armstrong, whose firm is co-hosting the crisis communications bootcamp for higher education.<\/p>\n As a staff member for Sen. Orrin Hatch when the late senator chaired the Finance committee, Armstrong helped investigate university endowments. It was part of a wave of mostly Republican-led scrutiny of those wealthy schools. The pressure from those investigations, in part, led the<\/a> universities to offer more generous financial aid packages in the mid-2000s. And when Republicans overhauled the tax code in 2017, they added a new, unprecedented excise tax on the investment gains of wealthy university endowments.<\/p>\n Dozens of universities are now subject to the tax, which they\u2019ve been fighting<\/a> ever since to repeal, arguing that it takes away from money they could otherwise spend on activities related to their mission, like research and teaching.<\/p>\n With their billion-dollar endowments at stake, alongside future federal assistance, universities have turned to K Street for help.<\/p>\n The University of Pennsylvania has tapped the lobbying firm Cassidy & Associates, and in March, Stanford hired the Klein\/Johnson Group to lobby on matters around taxation and education. Cornell University in February enlisted the firm Capitol Tax Partners to lobby on \u201cissues related to taxation of tax exempt universities and their endowments.\u201d In January, another firm, BGR Government Affairs, registered to lobby for University of Notre Dame on issues including \u201ctax policy.\u201d<\/p>\n The federal government provides billions of dollars<\/a> to post-secondary institutions, and should former President Donald Trump win the 2024 election, his administration could work to siphon significant funding from the largest universities, in moves that could prove politically popular with his base. He has vowed to \u201creclaim\u201d educational institutions from the left and fine or tax the endowments of institutions that discriminate \u201cunder the guise of equity.\u201d<\/p>\n Whit Ayres, a veteran Republican pollster, suggested that the topic\u2019s resonance with voters was a symbol of Republicans\u2019 growing frustration with elite higher education.<\/p>\n \u201cThat really was the culmination point of a long period of Republican suspicion about the mindset of higher education,\u201d he said of the December hearing with the presidents of Harvard, Penn and MIT. \u201cRepublicans believe that woke liberals have taken over most higher education institutions and instituted a very rigid belief system that one must follow or be excommunicated from the woke tribe.\u201d<\/p>\n Phil Singer, founder of Marathon Strategies and former communications director to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer<\/a>, called universities the \u201cnew wedge issue\u201d \u2014 a dynamic for which they were not prepared, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cAll these things are conspiring to become a perfect storm of scrutiny for colleges and universities that they haven’t really experienced ever,\u201d he said of his firm\u2019s decision to open a dedicated higher education practice. \u201cEvery move is being scrutinized, and then you throw in the political element of congressional hearings, demagoguing on some of these issues, and they\u2019re facing significant reputational threats.\u201d<\/p>\n Marathon Strategies is trying to prevent some of its clients from being called to testify before Congress by generating more positive attention, Singer said.<\/p>\n But simply hiring a costly consultant to help deal with Congress does not always engender success. Harvard and Penn hired the prominent law firm<\/a> WilmerHale to assist in preparation for the December hearing. Both schools\u2019 presidents resigned in its wake.<\/p>\n Singer noted that while coverage of higher education institutions used to be delegated largely to trade publications, major dailies are now taking interest. Another university communications professional, who requested anonymity to discuss the increasingly sensitive climate for higher education institutions, emphasized that their institution was now handling press inquiries from reporters across beats.<\/p>\n A report from Singer\u2019s firm listing the offerings of its new \u201cDefendEd\u201d practice noted that \u201cweekly scrutiny of the country\u2019s top universities and liberal arts colleges increased as much as 1,200%\u201d in the last decade, based on a study the firm conducted. Marathon Strategies\u2019 report says its new program for universities will include a \u201cCrisis Playbook\u201d along with a \u201cPlagiarism Review\u201d for top leaders, among other services. Claudine Gay, Harvard\u2019s former president, was compelled to resign not just because of her performance at the December hearing, but also because conservative media outlets reported allegations that she had plagiarized her academic work.<\/p>\n