Elise Stefanik at YU: An Open Letter to Ari Berman

Rabbi Ari Berman prays during the 60th Presidential Inauguration at the US Capitol in Washington, January 20, 2025. (AP Photo/ Julia Demaree Nikhinson, Pool)

Dear Rabbi Dr. Berman,

As president of Yeshiva University, you occupy what must be, at times, an uncomfortable position. The public stances that the university takes – and, indeed, those you take, even outside of the precise confines of the institution – reverberate widely, perhaps disproportionately so, across the Jewish community, and the echoes of those stances surely travel further than that. I, for one, would not welcome the scrutiny that attends the leader of the flagship institution of Modern Orthodoxy. Nonetheless, when those reverberations strike a sour note, it is incumbent for community members to raise their own voices in dissent.

YU recently announced that its commencement this year would honor two notable women. One, Rachel Goldberg-Polin, needs no one’s endorsement. The university’s announcement captures the moment well:

The mother of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an Israeli American hostage murdered in Hamas captivity, has become a voice of conviction and spiritual resilience—embodying the aspirations, conscience, compassion and faith at the heart of the Jewish people. Her words will serve as both a personal testament and a guiding inspiration for this generation of YU graduates.

The graduates at this year’s commencement could ask for no better speaker.

Unfortunately, the other honoree invites a far different reaction. Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, will receive the university’s “Presidential Medallion.” Your statement in YU’s press release is worth quoting in full:

We are deeply honored that Rachel Goldberg-Polin and Congresswoman Elise Stefanik will address our graduates—two extraordinary individuals whose leadership has inspired strength, unity and moral clarity at a defining moment in Jewish history […] This year’s Commencement is more than a celebration of academic achievement—it is a powerful affirmation of the values that define our community and our Class of 2025: courage, compassion and a lifelong commitment to truth, faith and service. It also reflects our unwavering belief that especially in moments of darkness, we have the power, and the obligation, to bring light.

Without a doubt, these sentiments describe Ms. Goldberg-Polin exceptionally well. The same cannot be said, however, for Rep. Stefanik.

Rep. Stefanik was among the Republican lawmakers deeply involved in President Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the democratic results of the 2020 presidential election, and in so doing, return President Trump to power after and in spite of President Joe Biden’s electoral victory. In signing onto amicus briefs attached to frivolous lawsuits, issuing public statements rife with both misleading and false claims about the election, and announcing her intentions to object to the certification of President Biden’s victories, Rep. Stefanik helped foster the conditions for the attempted coup of January 6, 2021. However, she went even further than fomenting violence: even after the riots had been quelled and lawmakers returned to the Capitol chamber, she still voted not to certify President Biden’s Pennsylvania win. In the years since that dark day for American democracy, Rep. Stefanik has doubled down on her inflammatory and false rhetoric about the 2020 election. In 2024, she stated that Vice President Mike Pence should not have certified the lawful election results, and had she been in his position, she would not have certified them.

Rabbi Dr. Berman, please let me remind you of your own words on January 6, 2021. In a pair of Tweets, you stated, “I was heartbroken today watching the attempt to tear asunder the very fabric of our democracy. Such acts of violence have no place in our country. I remain confident in the spirit of the American people to heal from these wounds and join together with all people of good conscience to pray for the success of President-elect Biden and his new administration.” Clearly, you recognized in the moment that we were not witnessing politics as usual, that the attempted coup spurred on by President Trump and fomented by Rep. Stefanik and her ilk was a nation-historical rupture of the grand tradition of American self-government. How, then, can you in good conscience invite one of the purveyors of the falsehoods of that moment to celebrate YU’s graduates, and the values of “moral clarity,” “unity,” and “commitment to truth”?

I worry, of course, that I know the answer to this question already. Her adherence to prevarication and falsehood have made Rep. Stefanik a favorite of President Trump, and of late, you have made no secret of your willingness to put the university’s name and your own behind the president. When you gave a benediction at the president’s second inauguration, you also, as I am sure you know, gave an implicit institutional imprimatur to the administration itself. And despite the chaos and the brazenness and the norm-breaking of the administration’s first few months – the blanket denial of refugee admissions, the withdrawal of international humanitarian aid, the dismantling of lifesaving scientific research, the pardons to neo-Nazis, the naked graft – you and the university have continued to send out marketing materials proudly emblazoned with photos of your benediction, with President Trump looking on the background. If the university’s calculus equates the president’s goodwill with the university’s success, then of course there is some logical sense in inviting one of the president’s acolytes to commencement. But this calculus should be, for people of good conscience, wholly unacceptable.

To be sure, the relevance of Rep. Stefanik specifically at a Jewish university’s commencement is not solely based on her role in presidential machinations – notably, she was the major Congressional figure in the interrogations of university presidents at hearings on antisemitism. Regardless of the actual success of her efforts in improving the situation of Jewish students – it is worth noting that the crescendo of campus conflict at Columbia University, in April of 2024, came shortly after Rep. Stefanik grilled Columbia’s then-President Minouche Shafik on Capitol Hill – the Congresswoman’s aim on this issue is singularly directed in a way that a previous YU commencement speaker, Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, specifically warned about in her 2022 commencement address:

[W]e must be equal opportunity fighters against antisemitism.  We cannot only fight antisemitism on one end of the political spectrum, particularly if it is the other end of the spectrum from our political sympathies.  If you only see antisemitism on the other side of the political transom, then one can legitimately say you are not really interested in fighting antisemitism.  You are weaponizing antisemitism, using it as a political cudgel against your political opponents.

Too many people who fight antisemitism do so with a patch on their eye.  They see antisemitism very clearly but only see it coming from one direction, the political direction which they oppose.

We must abhor antisemitism irrespective of where it comes from. We must be non-partisan, equal opportunity fighters.  In fact, we should be more critical of those whose views on other matters we might share.  They are more likely to pay heed to our critiques because we have more credibility with them. Those on the other side of the spectrum might dismiss us. Those with whom we generally stand shoulder to shoulder on other matters, are less likely to do so.

Rep. Stefanik’s record, by Ambassador Lipstadt’s litmus test, is deeply wanting. She has herself been accused of dabbling in the conspiracy theory of “great replacement,” the same theory that broadcast itself to the world in the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville and its chants of “Jews will not replace us.” Those accusations are not without reason – one campaign ad from 2022 about “radical Democrats” claimed, breathlessly and baselessly, that “[t]heir plan to grant amnesty to 11 MILLION illegal immigrants will overthrow our current electorate and create a permanent liberal majority in Washington.” Equally troublingly, though, Rep. Stefanik was notably silent when President Trump entertained noted Nazi enthusiasts Ye (formerly Kanye West) and Nick Fuentes for dinner in his Florida mansion, or when media reports revealed that a number of White House officials have ties to avowed antisemites. We in the American Jewish community would be best served in curating ties with those who genuinely have our interests in mind, not only when it is politically expedient to do so.

In short, Rabbi Dr. Berman, YU has done its graduates this year a great service in inviting Rachel Goldberg-Polin to address their commencement ceremony. Her presence on stage is more than sufficient to embody the university’s and the community’s values of truth and unity. Please consider that the presence of Representative Elise Stefanik, an election denier and a selective opponent of antisemitism, does exactly the opposite.

Sincerely,

Daniel Shlian (Yeshiva College, Class of 2017)