NY GOP lawmaker lays out three-prong plan for dealing with pro-Gaza protests on campus

Rep. Claudia Tenney R-N.Y., on Monday, laid out three basic ways to respond to the anti-Israel protests occurring at more than 20 schools nationwide, including pulling tenure for professors who support the protests.

Hundreds of students have been protesting the war in Gaza over the past two weeks, and hundreds have also been arrested or suspended over the activities.

Tenney said there are three main ways to respond to these protests, which have often targeted Jewish students and made them feel unsafe. One suggestion was going after nonprofits that are funding the protests. Another was going after the tax status of universities that do not crack down on the protests.

"When you come down to money, I think you're finally going to get these schools to wake up," Tenney said on "Just the News, No Noise." "[School presidents] need to consult a lawyer that knows about the First Amendment, and they need to consult a tax lawyer and someone to say you're going to lose not only your not-for-profit funding, you're going to lose your tax exemption. And those are going to be real problems for these universities if they don't stand up and end these heinous attacks on our Jewish students across the country."

Tenney said the third step was holding students and professors accountable for the protests, and recounted an incident at Cornell University where she wrote to the school and demanded a professor be fired for calling the Oct. 7 massacre "exhilarating." The professor was later, she said, put on leave.

"Anyone engaging this should be expelled. That's just the bottom line," the congresswoman said. "Right now, I mean, we've got to just start taking action, this is not going to stop until we take decisive action. Expel these students, deport the students who are foreign students who are acting in this way and get rid of the professors." 

Columbia University most recently began cracking down on the protests by suspending students that opted to continue protesting after a 2 p.m. deadline to vacate the premises. The students who were set to graduate but continued protesting are no longer allowed to graduate, and students not graduating will not receive credit for the semester, school officials said.