[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 204 (Tuesday, December 12, 2023)]
[House]
[Pages H6855-H6857]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1915
             CONGRATULATING THE FOLSOM HIGH SCHOOL BULLDOGS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 9, 2023, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from California 
(Mr. Kiley) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. KILEY. Madam Speaker, I wish to recognize and congratulate the 
Folsom High School football team on winning the 2023 CIF Division 1A 
State football championship, beating St. Bonaventure this weekend 20-
14. This is Folsom's fifth State championship since 2010, their first 
since 2018. Head coach Paul Doherty got his team to buy in, and 
together they were able to achieve remarkable things, with Defensive 
Coordinator Sam Cole taking the reins and making life for the St. 
Bonaventure offense rather difficult.
  Sophomore quarterback Ryder Lyons opened the score in the first 
quarter, and Folsom held the lead at halftime. St. Bonaventure battled 
back and led 14-13 with less than 3 minutes left. Then Folsom's defense 
stopped the St. Bonaventure offense and took over with a little more 
than 2 minutes to go.
  Lyons led his team downfield and completed a touchdown pass to 
Jameson Powell with 20 seconds to go.
  Coach Doherty and Coach Cole's defense held from there, and the 
Folsom High School football team won the championship, capping off an 
amazing 12-2 season.
  Coach Doherty and the Folsom Bulldogs should be congratulated on 
winning the championship of the entire State. We know how hard they 
have worked. This team brings so much pride to the city of Folsom, and 
I congratulate all the players on a very well-deserved victory and 
amazing end to your season.


                    Free Speech on College Campuses

  Mr. KILEY. Madam Speaker, Harvard University's leadership today 
announced that they will be retaining President Claudine Gay, despite 
acknowledging President Gay's repeated failures to adequately condemn 
terrorism and anti-Semitism.
  Now, the university will have to answer for why it takes these 
matters less seriously than the University of Pennsylvania, which 
recently forced out its president. As disappointing as this is, the 
refusal of one university to make a needed personnel change is not 
going to stop the momentum for far-reaching reform that we are seeing 
in higher education. This is a moment of reckoning for higher education 
in this country, where the true character of our universities has been 
laid bare for the world to see.
  Even before last week's shocking testimony by the presidents of 
Harvard, MIT, and Penn, many in this country were asking the question: 
How is it that our leading academic institutions have been gripped by 
such an ancient and retrograde prejudice as anti-Semitism? How is it 
that institutions that have been suppressing free speech for years 
suddenly discovered the First Amendment as a reason not to condemn 
terrorism or to stop Jewish students from being bullied and harassed? 
How is it that university leaders who have waded into every political 
issue of the day suddenly felt bound by institutional neutrality when 
it came to the

[[Page H6856]]

murder of children? How is it that bureaucracies devoted to diversity, 
equity, and inclusion turned a blind eye to the targeting the Jewish 
students and, in some cases, even contributed to that hostile 
environment?
  Yes, this is a moment of reckoning. Our universities cost too much, 
their degrees deliver too little value, and they have become among the 
most intolerant places in American life. This is a time to rediscover 
the purpose of higher education so that our universities are once again 
leading lights in American life, are national assets, are places of 
community and belonging and truly higher learning.
  Tonight, I would like to take a moment to suggest a path forward by 
identifying 10 principles for a fundamental cultural change at our 
universities. I want to say first that this is a process, a 
conversation, that should be taking place at universities themselves 
with alumni, with students, with faculty, with administration, with all 
stakeholders.
  Congress does have a role to play. The Education and the Workforce 
Committee has already announced a congressional investigation into the 
three universities that we heard from last week and others about their 
failure to adequately address anti-Semitism on campus.
  In a broader sense, Congress has a role to play because of the large 
amounts of Federal funding that go to even private institutions. The 
founder of OpenTheBooks reported that Harvard and Penn are now more 
Federal contractor than educator, collecting more on government 
contracts and grants than undergraduate student tuition. The group 
discovered that between 2018 and 2022, Harvard received $3.13 billion 
in total Federal payments, which includes Federal grants and contracts, 
while Penn received $4.38 billion in payments.
  Yes, Congress has a clear interest in what is happening at our 
universities and not just from the perspective of oversight of our 
funds but also because universities are incubators for our broader 
culture.
  So many of the problems in our country today--censorship, the 
explosion of DEI, a redefinition of merit as something unaligned with 
excellence or even at odds with it--had their origins on campus, which 
brings us back to the present crisis of anti-Semitism.
  By now, the world has seen the shocking testimony of President Gay 
and her counterparts at Penn and MIT, refusing to condemn a call for 
genocide against the Jewish people as a violation of campus policies.
  Even prior to that testimony, over the last 2 months, President Gay's 
inaction created an environment on Harvard's campus where at the time 
of our hearing, she could not even say if Jewish students will feel 
safe and welcome. I asked her that several times, and she refused to 
answer: Could you look the family of a prospective Jewish student in 
the eye and tell them that their son or daughter would feel safe and 
welcome on your campus? She refused to even answer the question.
  In the aftermath of October 7, President Gay's carefully parsed 
statements, her silence, her Orwellian use of the passive voice, made 
it very clear that she sees the forces of anti-Semitism as a 
constituency that needs to be catered to--that sends a signal on her 
campus. It sends a signal that was clearly received by the forces of 
anti-Semitism on her campus, that reverberated across American higher 
education and seeped into our broader culture.

  We can't simply say that this problem has only taken hold in the last 
couple of months. The reality is that anti-Semitism has been growing on 
college campuses and prior to October 7 had reached an all-time high. 
Many have been speaking about this issue with a growing sense of alarm.
  For me, the extent of the problem, and the extent to which the 
universities themselves are serving to exacerbate the problem, really 
hit home for me in early 2020 when California released a proposed 
ethnic studies curriculum. This was a 550-page curriculum that was 
designed by ethnic studies leaders from various school districts and 
universities appointed by the State's board of education. It received 
support from 22 California State ethnic studies departments and 
education leaders throughout the State.
  The curriculum was broadly, universally condemned on both sides of 
the aisle, from people of all points of view. Indeed, Governor Gavin 
Newsom said at the time that it was offensive in so many ways and would 
never see the light of day. Among the problems with the curriculum, the 
biggest, the most deeply problematic, was the many instances of anti-
Semitism.
  This is what was written by the California Legislative Jewish Caucus, 
a group of legislators in our State legislature, in response to the 
proposed curriculum. They wrote that the curriculum: Erases the 
American Jewish experience, fails to discuss anti-Semitism, reinforces 
negative stereotypes about Jews, singles out Israel for criticism, and 
would institutionalize the teaching of anti-Semitic stereotypes in our 
public schools.
  The letter goes on: Jews are essentially excluded from the 
curriculum. We have been advised that this exclusion appeared to be 
intentional and reflected the political bias of the drafters. They 
called it deeply insulting, fundamentally inconsistent with the 
purposes of ethnic studies, harmful to Jewish and non-Jewish students, 
and indicative of an anti-Jewish bias in the curriculum that would be 
dangerous to institutionalize.
  The letter goes on: In the few instances where the curriculum 
acknowledges Jews, it does so in a denigrating and discriminatory 
manner. For example, it recommends song lyrics that inappropriately 
delve into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with a strong bias and 
little nuance. The curriculum asserts that Israelis ``use the press so 
they can manufacture'' a classic anti-Semitic trope about Jewish 
control of the media.
  The letter states: It is difficult to fathom why the State of 
California would want to actively promote a narrative about Jews that 
echoes the propaganda of the Nazi regime.
  This was a few years ago where you had a panel of university leaders 
proposing, at the behest of the California State legislature, a 
curriculum that, by the way, was going to be a graduation requirement 
for every high school student in the country, and the State's own 
Legislative Jewish Caucus said that it echoes the propaganda of the 
Nazi regime.
  This has been a problem growing at our universities for some time, 
and the failures of President Claudine Gay the last 2 months, and her 
shocking testimony at our hearing last week, simply put the deeply 
anti-Semitic currents in our universities on stark display.
  Now, at the same time that we have seen this rise in anti-Semitism on 
college campuses, there have been many other deeply troubling trends. 
Indeed, what made President Gay's tolerance for anti-Semitism all the 
more morally abhorrent was that this was coming from a president whose 
university ranked dead last, 248 out of 248, in free speech rankings 
released earlier this year. Yet, here she was at our committee hearing 
talking about her university's ``commitment'' to free expression.
  The rankings that found Harvard to have come in dead last--in fact, 
Harvard got the worst score in the history of the rankings--cited 
surveys of Harvard students where just over a quarter of students 
reported that they are comfortable publicly disagreeing with their 
professor on a controversial political topic--just over a quarter 
comfortable disagreeing with a professor on a political topic. Only a 
third of students said it is very or extremely clear the administration 
protects free speech on campus. Even 30 percent said using violence to 
stop a campus speech is at least acceptable on some occasions. Truly 
shocking statistics.
  These problems have both been getting worse. As anti-Semitism has 
risen, so has the suppression of free speech. Indeed, even President 
Obama, several years ago, spoke about this issue. In 2016, Obama said: 
There has been a trend around the country of trying to get colleges to 
disinvite speakers with a different point of view or disrupt a 
politician's rally. Don't do that, Obama said, no matter how ridiculous 
or offensive you might find the things that come out of their mouths. 
There will be times when you shouldn't contradict your core values, 
your integrity, and you will have the responsibility to speak up in the 
face of injustice. But listen. Engage. If the other side has a

[[Page H6857]]

point, learn from them. If they are wrong, rebut them. Teach them. Beat 
them on the battlefield of ideas. That is what President Obama said in 
2016.

  That same year, the head of the University of California, Janet 
Napolitano, discussed this in an editorial where she wrote that the 
sanctity of free speech in our country is hardly guaranteed, at least 
not on our college campuses. Napolitano, by the way, was a member of 
President Obama's cabinet and the Democrat Governor of Arizona.
  She went on to warn how far we have moved from freedom of speech on 
campuses to freedom from speech. She said we have moved from freedom of 
speech on campuses to freedom from speech.
  Indeed, the rise of anti-Semitism and the suppression of free speech 
on college campuses has gone hand in hand. I saw the degree of this 
when I was a State legislator and proposed the Free Speech on Campus 
Act. That legislation got support from dozens of Jewish-American groups 
who had seen how the suppression of free speech was used to exclude 
people, to shut down speakers who represented their point of view or 
were of their background.
  In fact, earlier this year, we saw California university student 
groups actually say they were not going to allow speakers based upon 
their views on the State of Israel.
  This is a very important point. It is the same university culture 
that has given us speech code, safe spaces, microaggressions, bias 
reporting systems, and all of the other threats to free speech and free 
inquiry that we see on campus today. That same university culture has 
also given us widespread prejudice of a kind we never would have 
expected to see in America in the 21st century.

                              {time}  1930

  Something has gone terribly wrong with higher education in this 
country. There is a particular culture in higher education that is in 
many ways detached from reality, a world unto itself, divorced from the 
norms of frankly either political party, as we saw in the bipartisan 
condemnation of the university presidents last week, or even basic 
American institutions.
  Now is the time to uproot that culture and to reform higher education 
in America, to return our universities to their guiding purposes. 
Figuring out the path forward is going to take a lot of different 
perspectives.
  I want to list, very briefly, 10 basic principles that I think can 
guide that process. If pursued in earnest, it can return our 
universities to being national assets rather than institutions that are 
accelerating our country's decline.
  The first principle, of course, is a commitment to freedom of speech. 
This should be codified in a statement like the University of 
Chicago's. It should be aligned with the principles of the First 
Amendment with narrowly defined exceptions, as the Supreme Court has 
defined. Importantly, one of those exceptions is bullying and genuine 
harassment.
  A second guiding principle is academic freedom so that students and 
professors alike do not have to fear negative repercussions based upon 
the type of research they choose to undertake or the points of view 
that they choose to express.
  A third principle is institutional neutrality. Fareed Zakaria, in a 
widely shared clip from CNN, has said: ``The American public has been 
losing faith in these universities for good reason.'' He said there has 
been a ``broad shift'' as universities have gone from ``being centers 
of excellence to institutions pushing political agendas.''
  Universities themselves should not be political actors but rather 
should be forums where ideas can be debated and discussed and where 
students can be exposed to a wide variety of views and come to their 
own conclusions.
  A fourth guiding principle is upending the DEI bureaucracy, which has 
given us safe spaces and trigger warnings. It has taught students to 
look at each other through the lens of distrust, which has bred hate 
and division and taught students to hate our country.
  A recent op-ed in The Washington Post by Danielle Allen said this: 
``I was one of three co-chairs of Harvard's Presidential Task Force on 
Inclusion and Belonging, which in 2018 delivered a strategic framework 
for the campus.'' She said, ``Many are chalking up current 
controversies to diversity, equity, and inclusion work, and the task 
force's report was a contribution to that field broadly understood.'' 
But, she said, ``Across the country, DEI bureaucracies have been 
responsible for numerous assaults on common sense.''
  A fifth guiding principle is to allow for ideological diversity among 
administrators, students, and faculty. One report showed that 1 percent 
of Harvard professors identify as conservative. That is not a healthy 
environment for the flourishing of a free exchange of ideas.
  A sixth guiding principle is eliminating foreign influence at our 
universities so that our universities are not being funded by China and 
other adversaries of the United States.
  A seventh guiding principle is to return to core and real academic 
disciplines and to get rid of those that do not have any academic value 
or merit or adhere to the traditional norms of scholarship. This would 
include redefining core curriculums in such a way that students have a 
common set of knowledge that they come out of universities with.
  An eighth guiding principle is to revive trade schools and the 
teaching of practical skills, crafts, and professions at our 
universities as well as, by the way, in our secondary and primary 
schools. This is so every student doesn't feel like they have to go to 
university in order to get the skills and qualifications to get a good-
paying job.
  A ninth guiding principle is to make our universities more affordable 
so that tuition does not continue to skyrocket in a way that the 
Federal Government has fueled and so that students are not left 
hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt in some cases.
  A final principle, which in many ways encapsulates all the others, is 
to return to excellence as the real, true, overarching guiding 
principle of our universities--excellence in all of its forms.
  This would mean getting rid of grade inflation. It would mean 
revisiting admissions standards. It would mean restoring standardized 
tests, which have given people from all walks of life an opportunity to 
choose their excellence. It would mean having a culture of debate and 
discussion on campus where the better idea wins, and each student can 
make that decision for themselves.

  If our universities truly come to value excellence again, then that 
will be the characteristic of their graduates and the future leadership 
of our country, as well.
  This is a moment of reckoning in higher education. It is a moment to 
rediscover the purpose of a university as a center for research, as a 
place to explore cutting-edge ideas, and as a place to prepare young 
people for the task of citizenship, which goes to the heart of what our 
country is all about, this great experiment that our Founders started 
in self-government.
  Rethinking our institutions of education and higher learning is going 
to be vital to making sure that that experiment continues to flourish 
in the years and decades ahead.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________