Bernie Sanders Blocks Senate Resolution Condemning Campus Antisemitism
Senator Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) speaks in Triangle, Va., April 22, 2024.
Senator Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) blocked a resolution condemning antisemitism on college and university campuses in the United States in his role as chairman of the upper chamber’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions committee.
The resolution, introduced by Senator Tim Scott (R., S.C.), would condemn “the rise of antisemitism on campuses of institutions of higher education across the United States” and “administrators of institutions of higher education who have enabled ongoing antisemitism on their campuses.” It also would urge the U.S. Department of Education to ensure those institutions of higher education have complied with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and that “students, including Jewish students, are not experiencing discrimination in violation of such Title VI.”
Title VI holds that entities on the receiving end of federal funding must not allow discrimination, exclusion, or denial of benefits on the basis of race, color, or national origin. Numerous colleges and universities, including Harvard, Northwestern, and Princeton, have faced Title VI complaints since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 and harassment of Jewish students erupted on their campuses.
After blocking the resolution on Tuesday, Sanders took to X, writing, “Today I offer a simple resolution: NO to antisemitism. NO to Islamophobia. NO to racism and bigotry in all its forms. YES to free speech and protest under the 1st Amendment, whether on a college campus or across our nation.”
Sanders said on the Senate floor that he would instead offer a resolution condemning “the rise of antisemitic, anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, anti-Asian, and any other form of discrimination” in higher education and affirming “Congress’s support for the First Amendment to the Constitution and freedom of speech and dissent.” He urged university administrators and elected officials to “take all necessary steps to protect students’ safety and civil rights, including their right to peacefully assemble and protest.”
The resolution Scott introduced would not curtail First Amendment rights. The U.S. Supreme Court has previously ruled that the First Amendment does to protect discriminatory conduct “so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive, and that so undermines and detracts from the victims’ educational experience, that the victim-students are effectively denied equal access to an institution’s resources and opportunities.” The destruction of property seen at campus protests also does not count as protected speech.
Scott, in his response to Sanders’s rejection of his resolution, said his version was “quite simple.”
“The two-thousand-plus arrests on college campuses weren’t because of violence against black folks or violence against Muslims or violence against Hispanics or violence against Asians,” Scott said. “It was violence against Jewish students. It was vandalism on college campuses because of these folks who ere trying to intimidate and get to our Jewish students. It was our Jewish students that couldn’t walk to class in peace. It was our Jewish students who couldn’t study in libraries without intimidation.”
“An objection to my resolution is an objection to the reality that, today, our Jewish students are facing disgusting environments on college campuses and the administrators sit back with their hands under their butts,” Scott added.
In a statement to National Review, Scott said that college and university campuses have become uniquely hostile to Jewish students.
“We are witnessing antisemitic hate and extremism that threatens the very safety of our Jewish students on college campuses around the greatest nation on God’s green earth,” Scott said. “There can be no equivocating when it comes to the issue of antisemitic violence or hatred. And I — and every single one of us — should just call it out for what it is. The American people, and especially our Jewish brothers and sisters, deserve our moral clarity on this issue.”
Blocking Scott’s resolution was not the first time Sanders has stood in the way of committee action on campus antisemitism. While the House Education and Workforce Committee has been busy holding hearings with university leadership — first the presidents of Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Pennsylvania and then Columbia University administrators — its Senate counterpart has not done the same.
Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee ranking member Bill Cassidy (R., La.) has written two letters to Sanders requesting that the chairman allow a committee hearing on antisemitism within higher education. Cassidy asked Sanders to invite Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and assistant secretary for civil rights Catherine Lhamon to testify “about the actions they are taking to address antisemitism on college campuses.”
He told Jewish Insider in a statement earlier in May that “it is the Committee’s responsibility to hold schools and the Department of Education accountable for the safe learning environment of all students.”
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