Robert C. "Bobby" Scott

“I want the House to vote against this bill. No American college has officially boycotted Israel. A student or teacher sharing an opinion is not the same as an official college policy. We should stop people from treating Jewish people badly, but we should not violate free speech to do it.”

“Mr. Speaker, I will close by returning to the central point: that we must distinguish between student or faculty expression in university policy. A student organization or individual faculty member supporting BDS is not the same thing as the university administration adopting BDS as policy. A faculty member expressing a political opinion is not the same thing as the institution imposing a boycott. Importantly, we have yet to see a single American college or university adopting BDS in the way the bill suggests. Furthermore, we know the bill is intended to target the BDS movement. Yet it is not clear whether a school that even joined the BDS movement would be covered by the text of the bill. The bill implicates ``nonexpressive boycotts’’ as the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Castro) just pointed out. If it is expressive, it is protected by the First Amendment. BDS by its very nature is designed to express disapproval of the actions of the State of Israel. If a college or university came out and publicly said it was joining BDS, most people would agree that that announcement and any activity that flowed from it would clearly be expressive, and therefore, out of the scope of the bill. As an expressive activity, the statement would be protected under the First Amendment, and therefore, the First Amendment would protect the funding from being removed. But, again, no college or university has embraced the BDS movement anyway. We should combat anti-Semitism wherever it occurs, but we should not do so by punishing protected speech or conflating students’ views with university policies. For those reasons I urge a ``no’’ vote, and I yield back the balance of my time.”

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“I am sharing a statement from a teachers union that opposes this bill. They say it harms academic freedom, student safety, and access to college.”

“Mr. Speaker, I also include in the Record a statement from the American Federation of Teachers which says in part: ``The AFT has long fought for academic freedom, the safety and dignity of all students and educators, and policies that keep higher education accessible. H.R. 4795 undermines those goals rather than advancing them.’’”

“I oppose this bill. It hurts free speech and academic freedom by punishing colleges that boycott Israel or its settlements.”

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time for the purpose of closing. Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record a statement from J Street, which says in part: ``This means infringing on constitutionally protected free speech and academic freedom by penalizing institutions (and thereby unrelated research) for participation in certain boycott or divestment efforts targeted at Israel or Israeli settlements. There is a fundamental distinction between the State of Israel and the territory that it occupies over the Green Line, and penalizing universities for expressing their opposition to activities that further annexation sets a dangerous precedent.’’”

“I want members to vote against this bill. No American college is boycotting Israel, so this bill tries to fix a problem that does not exist. It also threatens free speech and academic freedom.”

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, today, we find ourselves here, again, purportedly to address anti-Semitism in American higher education. While we should be able to agree that there is no place in higher education for anti- Semitism, the fact is my colleagues on the other side have been curiously quiet, or selectively quiet, about addressing anti-Semitism when it actually does occur. Recall when President Trump declared that there were fine people on both sides when a bunch of White supremacists and their Unite the Right rally marched on the University of Virginia’s campus chanting: ``Jews will not replace us.’’ My colleagues on the other side were also silent as numerous reports regarding chapters of the College Republicans openly promoted their hated of Jewish people among other groups. All the while this has been going on, my colleagues have not told the President to stop firing lawyers at the Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Education, the agency responsible for investigating claims of anti-Semitism in education. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle are certainly mum about how this administration is dismissing Title VI disparate impact analysis, the very tool necessary to address practices and policies that may appear facially neutral but, in fact, discriminate against protected classes under the law. I have not heard them comment on the whistleblower allegations, and many investigations into anti-Semitism on college campuses, led by the Department of Justice’s Anti-Semitism Task Force, were based not on fact patterns or legal analysis but political priorities. With that said, we have the bill before us, the so-called Protect Economic and Academic Freedom Act, which would amend the Higher Education Act by imposing new conditions on colleges and universities that receive higher education funding. Under the bill, institutions receiving Title IV Federal student aid would be legally required to certify that they are not engaged in a nonexpressive commercial boycott of Israel. I will begin with an important distinction: there is a difference between actions, or views of students, or even recognized student organizations and the official policy of the colleges and universities they attend. Students have the right to express their political views, but that does not mean that their university has adopted those views, such as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, or BDS, movement. We have yet to see a single college or university in the United States adopt the BDS movement or institutional boycott policies contemplated in the bill. Simply put, the bill does not address any ongoing or existing higher education policy boycotting Israel. Nonetheless, this would create new Federal requirements intended to prevent institutions from adopting such policies in the future. Moreover, as we examine the bill, Members should be careful to consider how these Federal requirements would operate in practice, the potential of negative effect on institutions receiving Federal funds, and whether the bill is misusing the power that we have from the Constitution’s Spending Clause to illegally sanction First Amendment- protected speech, particularly those of students. As written, the bill presents serious First Amendment problems and improperly limits academic freedom. I had hoped these problems could have been resolved before we got to the floor, but they weren’t, so I will be opposing the bill. For these reasons, I ask Members to vote ``no,’’ and I reserve the balance of my time.”