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Representative Aaron Bean, Republican of Florida and chair of the subcommittee, said after the hearing that he considered it “a starter conversation” on the issue of antisemitism in public schools. He brushed off a question about Mr. Banks’s forceful pushback against Republican efforts to portray the school leaders as failing to tackle the issue.
“We said we were going to have an open conversation,” Mr. Bean said. “I think it was very effective. Our objectives were shining the light that this is indeed happening. A lot of folks say it’s not happening.”
Still, by the end of the hearing, Republicans did not seem to have landed a breakout moment.
Representative Elise Stefanik, the New York Republican who was a fiery questioner of the college presidents, focused on the Hillcrest High School episode, and the decision to remove the school’s principal and reassign him to a post in the Education Department’s main offices, rather than fire him outright. “We are getting lip service,” she said, “but a lack of enforcement, a lack of accountability.”
Yet even she could not seem to fully crack the chancellor’s confidence.
“You said you fired the principal,” Ms. Stefanik said, urging him to “check the testimony.”
“I never said I fired the principal of Hillcrest — you check the record,” Mr. Banks countered.
(Both were, to some degree, technically correct. Ms. Stefanik’s colleague, Representative Lisa C. McClain, Republican of Michigan, had asked, “So you fired the people?” Mr. Banks replied, “Yes,” but quickly clarified: “We remove people, absolutely.”)
