Education Secretary Miguel Cardona condemned campus demonstrations upending colleges this spring as the top Republican on the House education committee called for his resignation.

House Education and the Workforce Committee Chair Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) once again pressed Cardona to step down over his response to antisemitism and campus demonstrations which have led to hundreds of arrests at universities around the nation.

“From the beginning, I’ve urged a firm hand in dealing with the explosion of antisemitism on campus,” Foxx said in her opening remarks at a Tuesday oversight hearing on the Education Department’s policies and priorities. “With the outbreak of campus riots, I am only more resolute, so I will say it again: you must resign.”

Cardona got ahead of the expected battering by House Republicans by underscoring in his opening testimony that he wasn’t appearing before Congress to “create a spectacle.” The secretary’s appearance before the House education committee is his third before Congress in four weeks.

“My purpose here today is to propose a budget that can help protect and support our nation’s students,” Cardona said. “It’s not to create a spectacle for the benefit of the media or to promote divisions that inflame culture wars and political sideshows that do nothing to help our young people succeed.”

The Education Department is asking for $162 million — a $22 million increase — for its civil rights arm, which the department says would largely help the Office for Civil Rights investigate the increase in Title VI complaints that the agency is receiving.

“Antisemitism is discrimination and is prohibited by Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” Cardona said. “Dissent is essential to democracy, but dissent must never lead to disorder or to denying the right of others so students can finish their semester and their college education.”