A Fireside Chat with Elise Stefanik and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen

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For decades, conservatives have warned about the decline of higher education. Now, for the first time in modern history, Americans are taking action.

Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, a Harvard alumna herself, lit the fuse when she posed basic questions to the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania, such as: Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate your university’s rules on bullying and harassment? Their inability to answer with moral clarity sparked a national reckoning causing multiple Ivy League presidents to resign. It was the most-watched Congressional hearing of all time. But that was just the beginning.

Poisoned Ivies delivers an unflinching account of what has gone wrong on America’s college campuses. Stefanik exposes how the nation’s most prestigious institutions abandoned their founding ideals of freedom of thought, open debate, and academic excellence, and instead embraced a culture of censorship, radical leftist groupthink, antisemitism, and moral cowardice that has spread far beyond campus walls to every corner of American life.

Both a damning exposé and a blueprint for reform, Poisoned Ivies is a timely story of courage and conviction and the power of one voice to challenge the status quo in American higher education and delivers a long-overdue reckoning. A must-read for anyone concerned with the fight for our nation’s soul.

Congresswoman Elise Stefanik has proudly represented New York’s 21st Congressional District for six terms and currently serves as Chairwoman of House Republican Leadership. At the time of her first election, Elise made history as the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. A native Upstate New Yorker, Elise consistently and overwhelmingly won her re-election campaigns, often by the largest margin of any Republican in the Northeast. For over a decade, she has served on the House Armed Services Committee, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and the Committee on Education and the Workforce. Congresswoman Stefanik is widely recognized as one of the most effective questioners in Congressional hearings. She was featured on TIME's 100 List as one of the most influential leaders in the world and is frequently named on the Most Powerful Women in Washington List by Washingtonian magazine.
Drawing on her experience in House committee hearings where she gained national attention for holding Ivy League university presidents’ feet to the fire, Elise continues to expose the failures of American higher education and the reckoning facing elite universities in her first book, Poisoned Ivies, set for release this April.
A Harvard alumna herself, Elise lit the fuse when she posed simple, moral questions to the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania, most notably asking whether calls for the genocide of Jews violate their universities’ rules on bullying and harassment. Their inability to answer with clarity or conviction sparked a national earthquake in academia, ultimately triggering the resignations of multiple Ivy League presidents. This “hearing heard ’round the world” became the most-watched congressional proceeding of all time, garnering more than a billion views in just one week.
Elise lives with her husband, Matt, and their four-year-old son, Sam, in Saratoga where her most important title is “mom.

About The Moderator

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is the first Hispanic woman elected to Congress and served for almost three decades representing diverse areas in South Florida. During her tenure in Congress, she was Chairwoman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and served on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

A strong proponent of education, Rep. Ros-Lehtinen holds multiple education degrees, including an Ed.D. from the University of Miami, master’s and bachelor’s degrees from Florida International University, and an associates degree from Miami Dade College.

Ros-Lehtinen and her husband, Dexter Lehtinen, a decorated Vietnam war veteran and former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, have 4 adult children, 9 grandchildren, and are the proud parents of two rescue pups, Zoey and Blue.

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