Georgetown Spoke About Us, It Didn't Speak for Us

On July 15, Georgetown’s interim president, Robert Groves, testified before the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce in a hearing framed around antisemitism in higher education. But it quickly became clear that this wasn’t about confronting anti-Semitism on college campuses; it was about silencing dissent. And amid the performative outrage, Georgetown’s Qatar campus, our campus, was dragged into the spectacle.

We weren’t named to be defended. We were name-dropped to score points.

Groves painted GU-Q as a feel-good story, proudly telling the committee that 70% of our students are women and describing our presence in Doha as a “mission consistent with Jesuit values.” In other words: look at us, educating the marginalized abroad. He invoked our gender ratio, our geography, our “frontier” status. We were a bullet point in his defense strategy, a symbolic project to affirm the university’s liberal conscience.

But when it came to what GU-Q students actually say, do, and organize around, the tone shifted. When asked about a modest brown wall display on decolonization hosted by student clubs, Groves distanced himself. “I don’t have knowledge about that event,” he said. And that was that. He didn’t need to know about the event. What mattered was the opportunity to affirm that Georgetown protects space for difficult conversations, that students, even those in Doha, have the right to speak, challenge, and resist. Insist that we are not outliers, but active participants in the academic freedom Georgetown claims to uphold, a freedom that Groves himself reaffirmed yesterday as central to our Jesuit mission. When we engage in discourse, activism, and critique, we are not deviating from Georgetown’s values; we are embodying them.

But he didn’t say that. Not because he couldn’t. Because he wouldn’t. And that moment said everything.

Groves’ testimony showed what the university values more than student voices: institutional reputation. He spoke at length about welcoming Israeli voices to campus, including IDF soldiers and families of hostages. But when it came to Palestinian voices, or even gestures of solidarity with decolonial struggles, the university took no stand, except to shrink away.

The hearing weaponized the word “antisemitism” not to protect Jewish students, but to attack Palestine advocacy. That’s not just my take, it’s what student groups across the country, including SJP Georgetown, UC Berkeley, and CUNY, wrote in a collective statement: “The claims the Committee set forth were nothing more than a disgraceful conflation of antisemitism and anti-Zionism.”

And yet, Georgetown played along. Groves’ written testimony for the hearing cited upcoming changes to the student code of conduct, which would include banning masks that would protect students’ identities during protests. But let’s be honest about what that policy really is: a roadmap for exposing vulnerable students to harassment, surveillance, and blacklisting. In an age of digital witch hunts like Canary Mission, forcing students to show their faces at protests is not safety - it’s endangerment.

So when Groves said, “If Jewish students don’t feel safe, it destroys our mission,” I found myself asking: what about us? What about the Palestinian student afraid to protest because their name might end up on a blacklist? What about the Arab student who hesitates before posting, because they know that one screenshot can cost them a visa, a job - a future?

And still, in the midst of all this silence, Groves made sure to highlight one thing: that Georgetown had rejected a student referendum calling for divestment from companies tied to Israel’s military. He presented it as a moral stand, as evidence of institutional resolve. But it was a telling moment. Because what the university is willing to reject loudly, it often refuses to defend at all. Condemning student advocacy is easy when it plays well in front of power. Standing by your students when they’re the ones being targeted? That’s what was missing.

This university has built an entire brand on interreligious dialogue, moral responsibility, and global engagement. Our Jesuit identity wasn’t just present in Groves’ testimony; it was the foundation of it. He invoked it repeatedly, as a shield against criticism and a signal of Georgetown’s supposed ethical clarity. But when it mattered, when Representatives smeared students for organizing a wall display, when Palestinian speakers were compared to the KKK on the record, Georgetown’s president didn’t push back. He nodded along. You can’t claim to form “people for others” and then leave your students hanging when they are vilified for standing with the oppressed. 

You can’t invoke Jesuit values in theory and abandon them in practice.

You can’t celebrate diversity when it’s convenient and then fall silent when it’s politicized. 

You can’t build a campus in the Arab world and then treat its students like a PR line, not a political reality.

I’m proud to be part of GU-Q. I’ve seen this campus foster rigorous debate, brilliant organizing, and unapologetic care. But I’m not proud of how we were represented in that hearing. I’m not proud of a university that protects its image more than its people. And I’m not proud of leadership that praises us in the abstract while refusing to defend us in practice.

So here’s the part where I say what Groves didn’t:

We are not props.

We are not passive recipients of Western education.

We are not your gender statistic or your moral high ground.

We are students. We are thinkers. We are witnesses. We are participants.

And we see everything.

To our campus leadership in Doha: the silence from Healy Hall cannot be replicated here. You do not need to answer for Groves, but you do need to answer us. Because if this university claims to stand for justice, it cannot outsource its courage.