[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 179 (Tuesday, October 31, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Page S5237]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                 ISRAEL

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, now on a related matter, I spoke 
recently about alarming reactions to the October 7 attacks coming from 
America's top universities. We have seen student radicals spew outright 
hate and campus leaders respond with agonizing, equivocating 
statements. But it appears that neither thick-headed, young activists 
nor mealy-mouthed administrators can hold a candle to university 
faculty when it comes to moral obtuseness. Here are a few examples:
  After a student group at Columbia published a letter describing 
Hamas's savage attacks as the--listen to this--``struggle for freedom'' 
of ``occupied peoples [who] have the right to resist occupation,'' over 
100 faculty members signed a letter of their own expressing a desire to 
``preserve Columbia University as a beacon for fostering critical 
thinking and opening minds to different points of view.''
  Needless to say, I am a staunch supporter of the First Amendment. 
People are entitled to different points of view, but they aren't 
entitled to different facts, and the only group that has occupied Gaza 
since 2007 is Hamas.
  Besides, America's higher education system has a long way to go when 
it comes to protecting free speech and fostering diverse viewpoints. 
Just ask any right-of-center academic. But, of all places to start on 
their journey toward freedom of expression, they choose to celebrate 
terrorism--terrorism?
  Meanwhile, the University of Pennsylvania is facing a donor revolt 
over campus protests and an anti-Semitic literary festival that 
predated October 7, but that didn't stop the local chapter of, 
essentially, its professors' union from issuing a six-page letter 
denouncing the university administration's pro-Israel views.
  The school's painfully nuanced attempts at moral equivalency are, 
apparently, an ``erasure'' of Palestinian voices. Donors' outrage at 
radical calls for a pogrom are ``coercive threats'' that demand their 
removal from all university boards.
  Let us remember who is doing the aggressing here. There is an open 
FBI investigation into online threats encouraging the murder--the 
murder--of Jewish students at Cornell. The university has had to bring 
in police to help protect the kosher dining hall on campus, and many 
Jewish students are opting to stay in their rooms for safety.
  Until recently, the tenured leftwing apparatchiks of America's elite 
universities might have expected donors to keep on writing checks no 
matter which sort of unhinged, post-modern hate they ginned up. Well, 
not anymore.
  At Penn, one alumnus's call to boycott the school has spread like 
wildfire, precipitating a crisis that, by one account, could put a $1 
billion hole in the university's books. At least a dozen CEOs have 
pledged not to hire any members of the Harvard student groups who 
blamed Israel for the murders of its children. And elite law firms have 
started rescinding job offers from law students who regurgitate 
terrorist talking points. Some are even competing with each other to 
fund relief efforts in Israel.
  So activist professors are entitled to their own opinions. But money 
is also protected speech, and they aren't entitled to donors' 
pocketbooks. That is not how the real world works.
  America and our allies have woken up from a ``holiday from history.'' 
American business and philanthropists are starting to do the very same 
thing. Let's hope it continues.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

                          ____________________