Bottom Line: Poisoned Ivies: The Inside Account of the Academic and Moral Rot at America’s Elite Universities by Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, herself a graduate of Harvard University, is not a polite critique. It is a long-overdue and necessary indictment. America’s elite universities did not merely stumble in their response to the antisemitism that emerged on their campuses. They failed to meet the moment altogether. Too many institutions looked the other way as encampments and hate-filled rhetoric spread across campus quads, normalized disruption under the guise of protest, and left Jewish students feeling increasingly unsafe. When confronted, too many administrators rationalized what was happening. When clarity was required, they offered equivocation instead of conviction. Yet the surge in antisemitism following the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel did not create a new problem so much as expose an old one, one that had been allowed to fester, largely unaddressed, beneath the surface of America’s most prestigious academic institutions. Agree or disagree with her politics, Stefanik’s book forces a reckoning.

Why Ivy Coach Reviews a Book Critical of the Ivy League

For those unfamiliar with Ivy Coach, it may seem counterintuitive that a firm devoted to helping students gain admission to these same institutions would spotlight such an indictment. But we are not in the business of protecting institutions, even our nation’s most esteemed institutions, from harsh and much deserved criticism. We are in the business of telling the truth. We are in the business of helping to create a better college admissions landscape for all. When universities fail to uphold basic standards of decency and safety for their students, they deserve to be called out unequivocally. Ivy Coach has been a vocal critic of the Ivy League response to the bullying and harassment of Jewish students and the failure of university leadership to condemn such acts of hatred from the outset.

A Pattern Across Elite Academia, Not an Aberration

Stefanik makes it clear that these failures are not isolated. Rather, they are systemic and years in the making. From early 20th-century quotas at Harvard University that restricted Jewish enrollment, to more recent decisions like Columbia University hosting Iran’s former tyrannical leader and Holocaust denier, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the pattern is undeniable. These institutions did not simply miss warning signs. They willfully ignored them.

The climate on many campuses does not exist in a vacuum. A 2020 study by the National Association of Scholars found that among faculty at leading public and private universities, there were roughly 8.5 registered Democrats for every one Republican. As Stefanik highlights, the imbalance becomes even more pronounced within certain disciplines: approximately 27 to 1 in English and 42 to 1 in anthropology.

Such disparities raise legitimate questions about intellectual diversity, viewpoint tolerance, and whether dissenting perspectives are genuinely welcomed in departments and schools that claim to prize open inquiry.

Follow the Money and Admissions Priorities

The problem extends beyond campus rhetoric. At many of these universities, international students now make up striking proportions of the student body: roughly a quarter at some institutions and as high as 40% at Columbia University (though this figure will drop to 15% after the university’s settlement with the Trump administration). These are American institutions. While educating the world’s citizens is a worthy aim (at Ivy Coach, we indeed help international students earn admission to these schools annually), it should not come at the expense of educating American students, particularly when these institutions receive substantial U.S. federal funding, funding that is not an entitlement. 15% is sensible. 40% is extreme.

Compounding concerns, foreign influence has surged. Between 2021 and 2024, foreign donors contributed nearly $29 billion to American colleges and universities, roughly as much as was given in the previous four decades combined. Much of this funding originates from countries such as China, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, raising legitimate concerns about priorities, transparency, and institutional independence.

A Failure of Leadership Atop Academia

In the immediate aftermath of the October 7th Hamas attack, the moral failures of leadership were laid bare. Statements from several universities were not just inadequate, they were disgracefully evasive. Leaders parsed language, hid behind abstractions, and failed to clearly condemn antisemitism. This was not nuance. It was complete abdication.

During a congressional hearing heard around the world, Stefanik asked what so many Americans were already thinking: Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate your institution’s rules on bullying and harassment? Yes or no? It is a question that should have elicited a simple, unanimous answer. Stefanik writes that she expected exactly that: a clear and resounding “yes.” Despite days of vigorous preparation, she did not anticipate what followed. Instead, the leaders of Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology smugly responded with some version of “it depends on the context.” The Jewish people heard that answer. The world heard that answer. That answer still echoes. Yet for so many of us, that answer was unsurprising. We knew these academics felt this way all along. At the advice of terrible legal counsel, they just happened to express their inner thoughts aloud for the world to hear.

Naming the Indifferent, Failed Leaders

Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel reminded the world that, “the opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.” That warning feels painfully relevant here. College presidents like Claudine Gay, Liz Magill, Sally Kornbluth, and so many of their peers became emblematic of this moral cowardice atop American academia. Their suggestion that calls for genocide could be permissible depending on the context is not just misguided. It is indefensible. Their answers required no nuance, no parsing, no hesitation. And yet that is exactly what was offered. As Stefanik pressed in her questioning, the logic became impossible to avoid: if calling for the genocide of Jews could be excused “depending on the context,” then what about the act itself? Would the genocide of Jews, too, somehow be permitted under university policy? The question exposed the incoherence and moral depravity at the heart of their answers.

The consequences of that moment were not abstract. Leadership requires moral clarity, especially in the face of hatred that is neither new nor ambiguous. On that standard, they failed abysmally. And while views on Stefanik’s politics differ, her questioning cut through obfuscation in a way that demanded accountability and is deserving of recognition. Her questioning and this book are her legacy, one she should be very proud of.

These college leaders should never have placed themselves in a position where such basic moral distinctions became controversial. Whether one agrees politically with Stefanik or not (we disagree with many of her positions), the episode revealed something deeper: a troubling indifference across American academia to the oldest form of hatred. And for that failure, or for that “rot” as Stefanik so aptly puts it repeatedly in her book, they quite simply were not fit to lead.

Models of Courage and Leadership

The story is not uniformly bleak across American academia. As Stefanik rightly highlights, there are models of principled leadership. At Dartmouth College, President Sian Leah Beilock offered a clear-eyed and immediate response, a voice crying out in the moral wilderness. Just three days after the Hamas attack, professors Susannah Heschel and Tarek El-Ariss, the leaders of the Jewish Studies and Middle Eastern Studies departments who are dear friends and had taught classes together for years, convened a campus-wide dialogue on the unfolding crisis. Thousands tuned in to witness what higher education should look like: informed, rigorous engagement across difference. Encampments and hurtful rhymes cannot solve one of our world’s most intractable conflicts. Teaching and learning from one another, across difference, is our best hope and it’s what academia, at its best, can offer the world.

Similarly, Chancellor Daniel Diermeier of Vanderbilt University provided a model grounded in institutional neutrality, open forums, and civil discourse, offering a blueprint other universities would be wise to follow.

Consequences and a Shift in Student Behavior

Students and families are paying attention. In the wake of these failures, interest among Jewish students in universities that demonstrated moral clarity, such as Vanderbilt University, Washington University in St. Louis, and Emory University, has surged. We see it firsthand at Ivy Coach with our students and their parents on the frontlines of the college decision-making process. As Stefanik points out, Vanderbilt, for instance, has seen its undergraduate Jewish population grow by roughly 20% in just two years, even expanding Hillel staff to accommodate increased campus visits.

At the same time, institutions that faltered, such as Columbia University, Harvard University, and Cornell University, have faced growing scrutiny from applicants and families alike. Leadership decisions have real consequences.

The Ivy League Can and Should Be a Beacon to the World

America’s universities, including the Ivy League, remain a beacon to the world, but that status is neither automatic nor permanent. It must be earned daily and protected deliberately. Poisoned Ivies: The Inside Account of the Academic and Moral Rot at America’s Elite Universities is a call to action: a demand that these institutions stop hiding behind carefully calibrated statements and start demonstrating real moral leadership, courage, and accountability when it matters most.

As Dartmouth President Sian Leah Beilock said in The Free Press: “If we as leaders can’t take responsibility for what we’re doing and be held accountable for outcomes, I worry someone else will try and do it for us.” That sentiment should not be treated as a profile in courage. It should be the baseline expectation for leadership at every top university. The fact that it stands out at all is precisely the problem. It reflects how far too many institutions have drifted from basic principles of responsibility and moral clarity.

Antisemitism, like any form of hatred, must be met with unequivocal condemnation and decisive action. Anything less is not merely disappointing. It is a betrayal of the very principles these institutions claim to uphold. And it does not depend on context. It never should.