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Yale was overly lenient in its discipline of pro-Palestinian student protesters who violated University policy during campus protests last spring, according to a report released Thursday by the United States House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

The report, the product of a year of investigation by House Republicans, accuses universities across the country of failing to properly respond to antisemitism on their campuses during pro-Palestinian protests last year. 

At Yale, “university administrators overwhelmingly failed to impose meaningful discipline for those who engaged in antisemitic conduct,” the report claims.

The report reveals that since the protests, Yale has reprimanded 23 students and is currently reviewing 22 other disciplinary cases. Two other students have been placed on disciplinary probation — one for cutting down an American flag and another for reciting a poem calling for “death [to] follow” those who “facilitated this mass killing.” Yale had not disclosed this information publicly. 

Reprimands are written records in college deans’ offices that are destroyed upon graduation, per the Yale College Undergraduate Regulations. They are the lightest penalty that can be issued by the Executive Committee, the body that enforces the regulations.

Probation penalties indicate that a student is in “official jeopardy.” The measure restricts students from taking a year or term abroad or holding leadership positions in registered student organizations that receive university funding.

Committee Chair Rep. Virginia Foxx first launched an investigation into antisemitism at Yale and other universities on Dec. 7, 2023. Over the summer, then-University President Peter Salovey was called to Congress to participate in a closed-door interview with the committee. He was originally summoned to testify publicly, but was later replaced by presidents of other universities. 

“We cooperated fully with the Committee and their requests and are reviewing the report,” a Yale spokesperson wrote to the News on behalf of the University.

The report lists six instances in which it alleges that Yale “failed to enforce their rules and hold students accountable for antisemitic conduct violations.” 

The incident detailed with the most length occurred on April 28 at an encampment on Cross Campus, when “illegitimate checkpoints denied Jewish students access to a central part of campus,” the report states. 

At the April encampment, protesters blocked the western and eastern ends of Cross Campus and asked anyone attempting to pass through to agree to a set of community guidelines. Guidelines included “being committed to Palestinian liberation and fighting for freedom for all oppressed people.” Those who did not agree were blocked from walking through.

No students received discipline for this incident, the report revealed, based on information provided by the Yale Counsel.

The report also notes that no disciplinary measures were taken against protesters who blocked the intersection of Grove and College streets for nearly nine hours after students were arrested, or against the student dance group Ballet Folklórico Mexicano de Yale or its members, who displayed a QR code at November 2023 performances linking a Venmo handle to support “Palestinian anarchist fighters.”

Disciplinary and criminal proceedings are still ongoing, however, for an incident in which “a Jewish student alleged that the alleged assailant waved a Palestinian flag in her face at the Beinecke Plaza encampment and hit her with it in her left eye” while “she was encircled and taunted by anti-Israel protestors.” The report draws these allegations from an article in The Free Press written by the student, Sahar Tartak ’26; her account has since been questioned by other journalists and outlets.

In the report’s appendix, which publicizes email, text and other communications between university personnel at several schools, two messages mention Yale. In separate emails, two employees of Northwestern University — Tarek Elmasry, a trustee, and Nour Kteily, co-director of two centers for negotiation — each wrote that they had mentioned Yale’s standing advisory committee on Jewish student life to colleagues as models that their university pursue.

Salovey announced the committee on Jewish student life in a statement on Dec. 7, 2023.