US Congressman Mike Lawler will introduce legislation to prohibit universities that “authorize antisemitic events on campus” from participating in student loan and grant programs.
The ‘‘Stop Antisemitism on College Campuses Act’’ was proposed in response to a recent controversial CUNY Law School commencement speech, where the speaker, student Fatima Mousa Mohammed, accused the U.S. military and Israel of “indiscriminate” murder, and asked students to join a “revolution” against Zionism, capitalism and racism.
Mohammed said that Israel “continues to indiscriminately rain bullets and bombs on worshipers, murdering the old, the young, attacking even funerals and graveyards” and encourages “lynch mobs to target Palestinian homes and businesses as it imprisons its children.”
The speech drew bipartisan backlash from progressives like Bronx Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., who called the address “anti-Israel derangement syndrome,” and former New York Republican Congressman Lee Zeldin, who said that taxpayer money should be pulled from the college for “raging antisemitism.”
Lawler is calling for CUNY to “face stiff penalties if they continue to let hate have a home” through his bill, which would amend the Higher Education Act of 1965 to add that an institution cannot “authorize, facilitate, provide funding for, or otherwise support” antisemitism.
