During this week’s broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Night in America,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) made the case for his Stop Antisemitism on College Campuses Act as anti-Israel protests on college campuses are underway around the country.
The New York State Republican insisted schools failing to crack down on antisemitism should be punished by having their federal funding taken away.
“Congressman, I think you anticipated my next question and it is also the question our viewers have, which is, they’re wondering whether tax dollars or public moneys are going to schools that either can’t or won’t condemn racist, antisemitic activities?” host Trey Gowdy asked.
“The bottom line to me is you need to be able to define what antisemitism is, enforce it, and if schools are failing in the enforcement, then they need to be stripped of federal dollars, including student aid,” Lawler replied. “And that’s why I introduced the Stop Antisemitism on College Campuses Act, which would defund institutions of higher learning. I think when you see what is happening here, you have a situation where there is clearly paid agitators and protesters who are involved in this. The New York Post reported on this just the other day, with these outside groups funding many of these protests on college campuses.”
“But you see that oftentimes, it requires the power of the purse to get these institutions to act,” he continued. “And the threat of taking those federal dollars away surely will cause many of them to do what they should have been already doing, which is put an end to these protests because they’re not rooted in fact, they’re not rooted in reality. They’re rooted in antisemitism. And the fact that these schools have allowed it to happen, knowing full well that if these were protests against Black people or protests against immigrants or protests against gay people, the schools rightly would have cracked down on it right away, but they are allowing it to happen under the guise of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, but we know what it is, it is antisemitism at its core.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
