WASHINGTON — On the day of its release, Rep. Elise Stefanik’s latest book examining the rise of antisemitism and “anti-Americanism” at U.S. universities has surged to the top of Amazon’s bestseller list. To promote “Poisoned Ivies,” Stefanik has announced a nationwide book tour.
Released this Tuesday, “Poisoned Ivies” arrives nearly three years after Stefanik’s notable confrontation with Ivy League university presidents during a Capitol Hill hearing. The New York Republican’s book delves into how that pivotal moment is reshaping American higher education.
“It became the most watched hearing in congressional history, surpassing even Watergate and impeachment hearings,” Stefanik told those gathered at a book-signing event in Washington, DC, on Tuesday. “The hearing underscored the absence of moral clarity and leadership at what are considered our most esteemed institutions.”
Stefanik revealed that she hadn’t initially planned to ask a particular question during the hearing. She had anticipated straightforward affirmations from the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and MIT when she inquired if “calling for the genocide of Jews” — a reference to campus protest chants — breached their universities’ codes of conduct.
“I phrased it as an easy question, expecting a ‘yes’ from them,” she recounted. “To my shock, presidents from MIT, Penn, and Harvard all responded with, ‘It depends on the context,’ and the world took notice.” She criticized their responses as attempts to hide behind legal jargon and moral relativism, declaring such responses “unacceptable.”
Stefanik went on to highlight the impact of the hearing, noting, “Within 48 hours, the Penn president was compelled to resign, followed by the Harvard president within two months.” She emphasized the responsibility of these institutions in shaping future leaders and argued that they have “fundamentally lost their way.”
Since then, there’s been “seismic shifts” in campus life that have revealed it’s “more competitive” to apply to Vanderbilt University and others that cracked down on antisemitism “than some of the Ivy League schools” still struggling to smother campus hate, Stefanik told The Post in a brief interview before the book signing event.
“Poisoned Ivies” is currently in the top 10 on Amazon’s overall bestseller list and reached first place for “Best Sellers in Political Conservatism & Liberalism.”
The Upstate pol is planning book tour stops in New York, DC, Florida, Texas and California.
The 256-page tome is not supposed to be “a typical political memoir,” Stefanik said, but a “behind the scenes” look at her efforts as House GOP leader and Education Committee member serving as a repository for “thousands and thousands of personal stories of what students were experiencing on campus.”
On Monday, she had appeared for an event at the right-leaning Manhattan Institute in New York City, where “some of the students who are actually featured in the book attended,” she noted, many of whom were harassed by anti-Israel protesters in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack.
But it also pulls back the curtain on disagreements that were occurring among leaders at the Ivies themselves — including “major infighting” between Harvard University and its governing board, as well as scuffles at Columbia University’s board over addressing antisemitic intimidation on campus.
Since President Trump’s re-election, many of the same universities have been targeted by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division over the issue, but Stefanik noted that there are several “positive examples” in the book of “schools that are doing it right like Vanderbilt, the University of Florida and Dartmouth.
Stefanik announced in December that she wouldn’t seek re-election to her 21st Congressional District seat on the same day that she ended her New York gubernatorial campaign — but told attendees at her DC event that she was “looking forward to the next chapter and working with so many of you in whatever, whatever capacity that ends up being.”
“Poisoned Ivies: The Inside Account of the Academic and Moral Rot at America’s Elite Universities” is available now from Simon and Schuster’s Threshold Editions.
