new bill in congress: teachers can't question US support of Israel

[donsu]

http://www.americanfreepress.net/03_19_04/New_Bill_/new_bill_.html


New Bill in Congress Targets Teachers Who Dare to Question US Support for Israel

The Israeli lobby has launched an all-out drive to ensure congressional passage of a bill, approved by the House and now before a Senate committee that would set up a federal tribunal to investigate and monitor criticism of Israel on American college campuses.

Ten months ago the New York-based Jewish Week newspaper claimed that the report by American Free Press that Republican members of the Senate were planning to crack down on college and university professors who were critical of Israel was “a dangerous urban legend at best, deliberate disinformation at worst.” They were claiming that AFP lied.

However, on Sept. 17, 2003, the House Subcommittee on Select Education unanimously approved H.R. 3077, the International Studies in Higher Education Act, which was then passed by the full House on Oct. 21. The chief sponsor of the legislation was Rep. Peter Hoekstra, a conservative Republican from Michigan.

-snip-

Leading the push for Senate approval of the bill are the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B’nai B’rith, run by Abe Foxman, the American Jewish Congress and the American Jewish Committee.

Also lending its support is Empower America, the neo-conservative front group established by William Kristol, editor and publisher of billionaire Rupert Murdoch’s Weekly Standard, which is said to be the “intellectual” journal that governs the train of foreign policy thinking in the Bush administration.
-snip-
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little Billy hard at work.

bet the she cheney has a bloody hand in this too.

[shoelace414]

1. is this more moral correctness?

[Jack The Tab]

2. Wow ...this is truly fascism growing in our country...

nary a peep from the media as well.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

3. You're already the anti-Christ if you question Israel.

This would simply make it official.

[aquart]

4. Really? What was the question?

I'm endlessly fond of the hit and run smear.

[htuttle]

6. Well, soon you won't have to worrry about that anymore

It will just be illegal.

[Maat]

8. Wow. This is unconscionable.

I took down the number. I want to see what happens down the line. Thanks for the info.

[Crunchy Frog]

5. They already control everything else.

Now they're moving in on the college campuses, the last bastions of free thought in this country. No real surprise there. It's what totalitarians do.

[Cheswick2.0]

7. Americans will not be able to find out how their representatives voted on

The Republican House members who originally joined Hoekstra in co-sponsoring this legislation should be named for the record. They are: John A. Boehner (Ohio), John R. Carter (Texas), Tom Cole (Oklahoma), James Greenwood (Penn.), Howard (Buck) McKeon (Calif.), Patrick J. Tiberi (Ohio) and Joe Wilson (South Carolina).

Americans will not be able to find out how their representatives voted on the bill. Hoekstra asked for a suspension of the House rules, which was approved, making it possible for the controversial measure to be passed with an unrecorded “voice vote.” There is no record of how individual House members voted or if they even voted at all.

[annabanana]

14. this means we can never leave "c-span", not even to pee.............n/t

[Surikat]

9. Sounds like a stupid piece of legislation...

There was one interesting aspect, though. I didn't realise that India, whith the second biggest Moslem population on the planet, and Israel were "geopolitically aligned". That just slipped right past me somehow. Strange.

[KurtNYC]

10. Soon they will ban all sentences that end in a question mark

[MadHound]

11. Well let us hope that some brave professor will stand up to this POS

And sue the hell out of these people. What, does the First Amendment not apply anymore? Sheesh, goddamn born again fundies and their apocolyptic delusions are going to be the death of us all before they're done.

[Cheswick2.0]

12. 20 years ago when I was working for the JCC

I never would imagine I would see this day. Will the majority of Jewish people go along with this? We already know the majority of right wingers will...religious and non religious both.

[Mike L]

13. What's the language of the bill?

[pinto]

15. I agree HR 3077 was bad legislation. A note on the quoted source:

It's from an April '04 edition of a very extremist site.

this is a snip from americanfreepress' "about us":

"You can see the future clearly if America continues her mad race to oblivion. Thanks to the press, the life-denying values-often called "democratic values"-are in vogue. Kids can't pray in school even as the taxpayers offer huge sums to the theocratic state of Israel. The Boy Scouts are scheduled for the guillotine because they don't want perverts to be scoutmasters and want to restrict membership to normal boys. The family is officially defined now as something other than what it has been since humankind appeared on this globe. The ancient Hippocratic Oath for doctors is trashed to accommodate the profitable business of abortion. Cultural communism-which is called political correctness-dominates all media. Art is literal trash and music is cacophony. Morals and speech are sewage, history as fact is viciously attacked by the media, entertainment is ethical syphilis. One must be blind not to see the direction. Where can it end? Jumping from a cliff brings a light-hearted feeling and the descent is most enjoyable until the inevitable sudden stop. Reality is not fitted with a bungee rope." <end snip

Anyone have more recent info on the bill? I can't remember if it died in committee, was passed, or what. I do remember the concern expressed by academia that it constituted an assault on education - specifically at Med East studies - by the administration....

thanks.

[SmokingJacket]

16. Bad source.

This is a whackball, "Jewish Conspiracy" publication.

The legislation is no good (any federal oversight of the content of higher education is bad), but this source and this post is misleading.

Please do more research before posting this stuff.

[Chomp]

17. So...

to date we've had...

- Creationism creeping into science class
- A Democrat being denied her right to worship on politco-religious grounds
- Teachers being told not to offer alternative versions to the Admin's line on Israel
- The CIA suddenly refocusing its efforts on "supporting" the regime
- "Values" trumping "Ideas" and "Rationality" and "Truth" and "Justice"

This is the institutionalisation and indoctrination of stupidity, narrow-mindedness, blind ideology, incuriosity and dishonesty. This kind of stuff creeps me out more than the election fraud stuff.

[carlvs]

18. Wait a minute...

I thought that americanfreepress.net was one of a number of racist and/or anti-semitic sites which quoting from was banned here on DU. This issue seems to come up quite a few times in the battles between the "CTers" and the "rationalists" in the 9/11 forum.

[Beacho]

19. Hmmmm, not available on the THOMAS server

I wonder why?

[Samoflange]

20. Here's the most recent incarnation of the bill:

Search for "HR 3077" at http://thomas.loc.gov/

Here's a snip of the advisory panel's duties:

`(d) FUNCTIONS OF THE COMMITTEE-

`(1) IN GENERAL- The International Advisory Board shall provide recommendations in accordance with subsection (b) regarding improvement of programs under this title to the Secretary and the Congress for their review. The Board may--

`(A) review and comment upon the regulations for grants under this title;

`(B) monitor, apprise, and evaluate a sample of activities supported under this title based on the purposes and objectives of this title in order to provide recommendations for improvement of the programs under this title;

`(C) make recommendations that will assist the Secretary and the Congress to improve the programs under this title to better reflect the national needs related to the homeland security, international education, and international affairs, including an assessment of the national needs and the training provided by the institutions of higher education that receive a grant under this title for expert and non-expert level foreign language training;

`(D) make recommendations to the Secretary and the Congress regarding such studies, surveys, and analyses of international education that will provide feedback about the programs under this title and assure that their relative authorized activities reflect diverse perspectives and the full range of views on world regions, foreign languages, and international affairs;

`(E) make recommendations that will strengthen the partnerships between local educational agencies, public and private elementary and secondary education schools, and grant recipients under this title to ensure that the research and knowledge about world regions, foreign languages, and international affairs is widely disseminated to local educational agencies;

`(F) make recommendations on how institutions of higher education that receive a grant under this title can encourage students to serve the nation and meet national needs in an international affairs, international business, foreign language, or national security capacity;

`(G) make recommendations on how linkages between institutions of higher education and public and private organizations that are involved in international education, language training, and international research capacities to fulfill manpower and information needs of United States businesses; and

`(H) make recommendations to the Secretary and the Congress about opportunities for underrepresented populations in the areas of international relations, international affairs, and international economics, in order to effectively carry out the activities of the Institute under part C.

-----o-----

I looked throughout the entire document, and honestly, I didn't find a single mention of a seven-member advisory board that would "have the power to recommend cutting federal funding for colleges and universities that are viewed as harboring academic critics of Israel."

There is no mention of Israel, and there is no mention of any authority to examine or recommend the cutting of academic funding due to dissent of American foreign policy in this bill.

Now, that doesn't mean that the bill couldn't be used to investigate colleges that have dissenting employees; I wouldn't put anything past these bastards....

But I'm guessing that perhaps a little too much has been read into this, at least concerning Israel.

Comparing the tone of the article to the existing language, yes; the bill technically could be used to allow Congress to recommend cutting funding to academic programs that don't tow the line in regards to America's political relationship with Israel; but if the bill is as dangerous as the article makes it out to be, it could also be used to cut funding to academic programs that conduct political debates on campus or hold panel discussions criticizing foreign policy, or programs that sponsor Arabic cultural activities, or even colleges that sponsor archaeological, historical, and cultural field trips to Cuba, Pakistan, Afghanistan, or any other "unfavored" nation.

Observation: the article doesn't quote anything from the text of the bill. I'm not saying that the article is B.S.; in fact, it would not surprise me in the least if the bill facilitates the blacklisting of academia.

I just naturally question any news that purports to explain legislation without quoting anything relevant from the legislative text to support or explain what the article is telling me.