A long-standing scheme instigated by the Israeli lobby to censor American university professors who are critical of unqualified U.S. support for Israel has once again reared its ugly head on Capitol Hill.

Rep. Patrick Tiberi (R-Ohio), joined by thirteen of his colleagues—nine Republicans and four Democrats—has introduced a measure that will set up what is nothing more than a “thought control” mechanism to satisfy Israeli lobby concerns about growing opposition to Israel on American campuses.

Tiberi’s bill—which is numbered H.R. 509—is nothing more than a revamped version of an earlier controversial measure, H.R. 3077, which died in a previous Congress as a result of widespread opposition, much of it generated by news reports first published in American Free Press and then widely circulated (via the Internet) throughout the American academic community.

Essentially, H.R. 509, which is innocuously entitled “To Amend and extend title VI of the Higher Education Act of 1965,” would set up a federal review board in the U.S. Department of Education designed to curtail academic dissent against U.S. foreign policy, particularly in the realm of American policy in the Middle East.

The pro-Israel lobby, represented by groups such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B’nai B’rith, the Zionist Organization of America, the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, and Hillel—among others—have time and again complained over the past several years in a variety of venues about the fact that American universities receiving federal funding for international studies programs have included professors who have been allegedly “anti-American, anti-Israeli, anti-Jewish and pro-Palestinian.”

Now, Tiberi’s measure is precisely designed to satisfy the Israeli lobby’s demand that federal controls be established to censor such points of view on campuses which receive federal funding.

Although there is nothing in the legislation which makes the political and ideological intent (and origins) of the bill so blatantly obvious and indeed the language of the bill—like much congressional legislation is draped in bureaucratic euphemisms disguising the actual agenda at work—the truth is that any serious inquiry into the history of such legislation demonstrates, beyond any question, that it is the brainchild of the aforementioned Israeli lobby pressure groups.

And while the bill’s sponsor, Tiberi, has been quite open in touting his legislation, there has been little—if any—news coverage of the proposal outside news alerts issued by the Jewish Telegraph Agency (JTA), which describes itself as “an international news service that provides up-to-the-minute reports, analysis pieces and features on events and issues of concern to the Jewish people.” As such, JTA’s reportage on the Tiberi proposal has largely only been publicized in Jewish community newspapers across the United States (and presumably around the world).

One JTA report on Tiberi’s bill says that supporters of the bill say that “universities often promote anti-American and anti-Israel biases and do not merit funds that were intended to serve American interests,” but admits that “many academics worry that restrictions will violate academic freedoms.”

Tiberi claims, in grand language, that, if approved, his measure will strengthen international and graduate programs in higher education, saying that America’s competitiveness and security needs are linked to a better understanding of other nations and cultures; that all of this, taken together, will help defend America in a dangerous post-9/11 world.

The bill was introduced in the House by Tiberi on February 2, 2005 and the following members of the House of Representatives have signed on as cosponsors. • John Boehner (R-Ohio); • Eric Cantor (R-Va.); • Luis Fortuno (R-Puerto Rico); • Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.); • Howard (Buck) McKeon (R-Calif.); • Jim Saxton (R-Mich.); • Joe Wilson (R-S.C.); • Dan Burton (R-Ind.); • Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.); • Ruben Hinojosa (D-Tex.); • Steve Israel (D-N.Y.); • Charlie Norwood (R-Ga.); • Anthony D. Weiner (D-N.Y.)

According to a press release from the U.S. House Education & the Workforce Committee (dated June 16, 2005), chaired by the bill’s cosponsor, Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio): “The bill establishes an International Education Advisory Board to increase accountability by providing advice and recommendations to the Secretary of Education and the Congress on international education issues for higher education.” 

Although the press release goes on to make the claim that Tiberi’s legislation “expressly prohibits the board from influencing curriculum, disseminating regulations, or awarding grants,” a review by American Free Press of the legislation has found no such prohibitions, despite the claims made in the press release which was generated by Boehner’s committee office.

Note, too, that one of the cosponsors is Rep. Hoekstra (R-Mich.) who was the sponsor of the similiarly-intended H.R. 3077, a bill which, in and of itself, was initially inspired by an even earlier proposal by two Republican Senators, Rick Santorum (Pa.) and Sam Brownback (Kan).

After American Free Press learned of the scheme by Santorum and Brownback and focused on their intention of introducing so-called “ideological diversity” legislation designed to curtail criticism of Israel on American college campuses, the resulting negative publicity forced the duo to back off.

Angry that the scheme had been derailed, the New York-based Jewish Week published a story about the controversy generated by AFP’s reportage saying that AFP’s revelation of the Santorum-Brownback scheme was “a dangerous urban legend, deliberate disinformation at worst” concocted by “several leading conspiracy theorists and Holocaust revisionists,” which had become “an article of faith throughout the Arab world and in some U.S. left-wing circles,”

In fact, the first (and little-noticed) report about the Santorum-Brownback scheme (which later spawned H.R. 3077 and now H.R. 509) was first mentioned in the April 15, 2003 in the small-circulation New York Sun, a stridently pro-Israel “neo-conservative” daily published in Manhattan which revealed that the two senators and several of their colleagues had discussed such legislation in the company of representatives of a number of powerful pro-Israel organization at a private meeting on Capitol Hill.

In any event, the Santorum-Brownback proposal has—like the proverbial “bad penny”—popped up again, now in the guise of Rep. Tiberi’s H.R. 509. Those who are concerned about freedom of speech on the campus would be wise to contact their representatives in Congress and urge that this legislation be put to rest once and for all. The U.S. Congress switchboard can be reached at: (202) 224-3121. Operators will be able to connect callers to their own representatives.
 

FINAL JUDGMENT, which nails down the Mossad connection to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, who was working assiduously to prevent Israel from building nuclear weapons of mass destruction, 

THE HIGH PRIESTS OF WAR, the first-ever full-length published account of the rise of the hard-line pro-Israel neo-conservatives

THE NEW JERUSALEM, an up-to-date survey of Zionist Power in America.

See americanfreepress.net for further details.