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Rep. Doug Lamborn, co-chair of the House Republican Israel Caucus, has asked the Dept. of Education to investigate Berkeley's Center for Middle East Studies for using Title VI funding for alleged anti-Israel pedagogy.
This is very bad! https://www.jweekly.com/2020/08/18/congressman-takes-up-students-claims-of-anti-israel-bias-at-uc-berkeley/
This is very bad! https://www.jweekly.com/2020/08/18/congressman-takes-up-students-claims-of-anti-israel-bias-at-uc-berkeley/
“Title VI is aimed at strengthening the interests of the United States in a complex global environment. It is imperative that students are presented with fact-based information, not agitprop with agendas quite different from Congress and the United States Government.”
As Lamborn explains in his letter to Secretary DeVos, some of the events hosted by Berkeley last year “maliciously attempted to portray the democracy of Israel in a negative light." According to Lamborn, this is not something that Title VI recipients should be permitted to do.
This sort of thing has grown increasingly common. Generally, we see one of two claims: 1) That anti-Israeli/anti-Zionist programming violates Title IX, which under a Trump EO forbids universities from discriminating on the basis of Jewish identity. https://www.natlawreview.com/article/what-do-colleges-and-universities-need-to-know-about-executive-order-and-title-vi
No problem, right? Well, the EO instructs the Dept. of Ed to consider the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism when evaluating whether Title IX has been violated. The IHRA, in turn, cites criticism of Israel as one kind of potential anti-Semitic speech.
https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/working-definition-antisemitism
https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/working-definition-antisemitism
And 2) The other claim is more limited and applies only to areas studies programs that accept Title VI funding, which is designed to educate students about foreign cultures in order to further US national security interests. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/19/us/politics/anti-israel-bias-higher-education.html
This seems to be what Lamborn is doing. Since Berkeley's CMES program takes Title VI funding, the Congressman is saying that it needs to either teach more pro-Israel content or forfeit the money. Which, quite obviously, is a massive threat to academic freedom!
You can read more about this over at @pal_legal, which has been tracking these strategies closely. https://palestinelegal.org/the-palestine-exception
