A Bill to Cut Federal Funding for Universities That Engage in Boycotts of Israel

Universities that capitulate to the anti-Israel and antisemitic mobs on their campuses ,and agree to their demands to cut ties to Israel, will now find — if a bill just introduced in Congress passes, as it almost certainly will — that their federal funding will be cut. More on this welcome development can be found here.

US Reps. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) and Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) on Tuesday introduced bipartisan legislation to cut off federal funding from universities that engage in boycotts of Israel.

The legislation, titled “The Protect Economic Freedom Act,” would render universities that participate in the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel ineligible for federal funding under Title IV of the Higher Education Act, prohibiting them from receiving federal student aid. The bill would also mandate that colleges and universities submit evidence that they are not participating in commercial boycotts against the Jewish state.

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“Enough is enough. Appeasing the antisemitic mobs on college campuses threatens the safety of Jewish students and faculty and it undermines the relationship between the US and one of our strongest allies. If an institution is going to capitulate to the BDS movement, there will be consequences — starting with the Protect Economic Freedom Act,” Foxx, chairwoman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, said in a statement.

Gottheimer added that the legislation is necessary to thwart the surging tide of antisemitism on college campuses. Although the lawmaker noted that students are allowed to engage in free expression regarding the ongoing war in Gaza, he argued that blanket boycotts against Israel endanger the lives of Jewish students and community members.

“The goal of the antisemitic BDS movement is to annihilate the democratic State of Israel, America’s critical ally in the global fight against terror. While students and faculty are free to speak their minds and disagree on policy issues, we cannot allow antisemitism to run rampant and risk the safety and security of Jewish students, staff, faculty, and guests on college campuses,” Gottheimer said in a statement. “The new bipartisan Protect Economic Freedom Act will give the Department of Education a critical new tool to combat the antisemitic BDS movement on college campuses. Now more than ever, we must take the necessary steps to protect our Jewish community.”

The legislation instructs the US Department of Education to keep a record of universities that refuse to confirm their non-participation in anti-Israel boycotts. The list of universities in non-compliance with the legislation would be made publicly available.

This bill would not only cut off federal funding for institutions that participate in anti-Israel boycotts. By making this information public, alumni will be alerted as to the moral morass of their alma mater and may choose to withhold support. Major alumni donors to Harvard, for example, have responded to the university’s failure to deal with displays of antisemitism on campus by withholding hundreds of millions of dollars that would otherwise have gone to Harvard.

In the year following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel, universities across the country have found themselves embroiled in controversies regarding campus antisemitism. In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Israel, hordes of students and faculty orchestrated protests and demonstrations condemning the Jewish state. Student groups at elite universities such as Harvard and Columbia issued statements blaming Israel for the attacks and expressing support for Hamas. …

Now universities, so far largely oblivious to appeals to common decency, as can be seen by their continued inaction against antisemitic behavior by students on their campuses — their “anti-Zionism” degrading into naked antisemitism — will face the wrath of the federal government, and the only kind of pressure that will have an effect on their behavior: the threat of ending federal aid, including student aid at the offending institutions. Students affected by this cut in their own financial aid, and faculty members whose research may also now be underfunded, are likely to be in a rage with the antisemitic student protesters, the faculty members who encouraged them, and the administrators who yielded to their demands. It will be a pleasure to watch the latter squirm as they are forced to distance themselves, for pecuniary reasons, from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) policies that they had hitherto embraced.