State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce told Newsmax on Thursday that Ivy League institutions are no longer producing leaders but “training bigots,” as she defended the Trump administration’s crackdown on elite universities in the wake of a deadly attack on Israeli Embassy staff in Washington.
On “Rob Schmitt Tonight,” Bruce criticized Ivy League universities, saying they have “failed our children” and are contributing to rising antisemitism in the United States.
Bruce’s comments come one day after a shooting in Washington that left two Israeli Embassy employees dead. The dead, identified as Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim — one of whom was a U.S. citizen — were gunned down outside the Capital Jewish Museum. Law enforcement officials said that the man who was arrested in connection with the shooting shouted “Free Palestine” and that the attack is being investigated as a hate crime.
“The Trump administration, along with Secretary [of State Marco] Rubio, have really committed — certainly in these early days — to stopping this violence,” Bruce said. “We, of course, have also reinforced and reinvigorated our relationship with Israel, one of our stalwart allies.”
Bruce pointed to pro-Hamas demonstrations on college campuses as a turning point in public perception.
“The kind of slaughter we’re seeing around the world and certainly Jew-hatred … it reminded the world [of] the worst massacre of Jews since World War II and the Holocaust,” she said, referring to the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in Israel. “And yet, what was the reaction here? At the universities, it was people pouring out in support of Hamas.”
She accused elite universities, especially in the Ivy League, of radicalizing students.
“You don’t necessarily see what they’re doing,” Bruce said. “You send your child, and then your child may come back a completely changed person who you don’t recognize.”
“What America and the world saw was people … associated with the Ivy League in support of the dynamic we saw on Oct. 7,” she added. “That was, I think, the first realization that something had gone desperately wrong.”
On Thursday, the White House halted Harvard’s ability to enroll international students. Foreign-born students currently at the university must transfer or lose their legal status, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced, citing antisemitism and reported ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
Bruce defended the unprecedented move, calling it “a big move, but an important one.”
“The Trump administration and Marco Rubio here at the State Department are determined to make sure that we make genuine, durable change,” she said. “We know what the problems are.”
“Our educational institutions that we rely on to train future leaders — in fact, they’re training bigots. They’re normalizing Jew-hatred,” Bruce added. “They’re pouring out, not people ready for their next job or to build society, but people who burn them down. And that has got to stop.”
She said that the Trump administration’s actions may be “a little shocking” but emphasized that they are long overdue.
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