[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 2]
[House]
[Pages 2402-2403]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      PROTECT ACADEMIC FREEDOM ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Illinois (Mr. Roskam) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. ROSKAM. Mr. Speaker, in December of last year, the American 
Studies Association did a shameful thing. They decided to call an 
academic boycott of one nation, and that is the State of Israel. Think 
about that. They looked over every other country of the world and they 
said basically by omission: Oh, you're fine, and you're fine, and 
you're fine. It

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doesn't matter what is happening there or what is happening there, but 
we are going to go after one country, Israel, and we are going to call 
upon a boycott.
  The former Israeli Ambassador, Michael Oren, after that happened, he 
asked this question:
  Will Congress stand up for academic freedom?
  And the answer is, yes.
  I was pleased, Mr. Speaker, to join with 134 colleagues, myself 
included, to send a letter to the American Studies Association to 
admonish them on what is clearly an anti-Semitic effort on their part. 
I know that is a very harsh thing for me to say, but there is no other 
way to describe it. It is anti-Semitic.
  I intend to move forward in the coming weeks to offer legislation 
called the Protect Academic Freedom Act which will prevent these 
campaigns by prohibiting Federal funds to universities that boycott 
Israeli academic institutions. Said another way, these organizations 
are clearly free to do what they want to do under the First Amendment, 
but the American taxpayer doesn't have to subsidize it. The American 
taxpayer doesn't have to be complicit in it, and the American taxpayer 
doesn't have to play any part in it. In fact, what we are doing on a 
bipartisan basis is calling for Congress to defend academic freedom 
because we recognize that academic freedom is at the very root of our 
own freedom.

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