The moment Rep. Elise Stefanik stepped to the podium at Yeshiva University’s commencement, she made clear this wouldn’t be your typical graduation speech.

Yeshiva University’s 94th Annual Commencement last Thursday featured Stefanik receiving the school’s highest honor, the Presidential Medallion for Global Leadership in recognition for her “strong leadership for the United States, bold resoluteness in the fight against rising antisemitism and her outspoken support for Israel and the Jewish people in the wake of the October 7 attacks.”

“You are a voice of conviction in a time of confusion, a profile in courage when too many choose to be silent,” were the words YU President Rabbi Ari Berman chose before introducing Stefanik. “When antisemitism festers on campus masked as academic freedom or free speech, you say very clearly that it does not depend on the context.”

“Your historic questioning in Congress didn’t just go viral. It sparked a national reckoning. Resignations followed. Policies changed. A moral mirror was held up to America’s elite institutions.”

By the time he welcomed Stefanik “into the covenant of conscience,” citing Edmund Burke’s warning that “when bad men combine the good must associate,” the stage was set for this year’s honoree.

“Join me in the fight to restore our country to a place of light and moral clarity,” Stefanik declared, her voice rising as she addressed the sea of black caps and gowns spread across Louis Armstrong Stadium in Queens.

She began by taking the audience inside the congressional hearing room on December 5, 2023 that made her a household name, painting the scene with remarkable intimacy: the junior committee member yielding her final three minutes, and of course the pencil-scrawled question written in real time.

“Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate your university’s code of conduct?” she had asked the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and Penn over their failure to address rampant antisemitism on their respective campuses. Their response of “it depends on the context” became Stefanik’s rallying cry.

“Let me tell you, it does not depend on the context,” Stefanik said to rounds of applause from graduates.

“It is now well into the multiple billions [of views] and there is a reason that it is the most viewed testimony in the history of the United States Congress.” The hearing, she argued, “exposed the moral rot at the highest levels of these so-called elite universities.”

Before taking her leave, Stefanik invoked George Washington’s 1790 promise to Newport’s Jewish community that they would “sit safely under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

“Well, it turns out that in the America of 2025, we still have to fight to achieve this ideal, and fight we will,” she declared. “Among you are the future leaders of the American Jewish community, of industry, academia, culture, and politics. May you internalize these lessons and choose to fight the right fights with the tenacity, determination, and fearlessness of the Maccabees.”

Image - Reuters