This is something that has been going on for years and ends up filtering down well beyond the initial entities that were restricted. For example, my company is a vendor to several universities and we have to certify for some of them that we are not boycotting Israel in order to renew annual contracts.
There is something extremely twisted about making boycotts illegal. At any rate what's stopping the institutions from making other arguments about boycotts that only incidentally target Israel? For example, they have every argument to not associate with institutions that may be held liable for gross human rights abuses.
If you take the king's shilling, you do the king's bidding. The law doesn't make boycotts illegal. It just says that you can't receive federal money if you're going to spend it on operations that engage in this kind of boycott.
In that case, they would have a hard time justifying the boycott of Israeli universities where many of those practice forms of affirmative action to (successfully) encourage inclusivity and proportionate representation of Arab students.
They would also have to boycott institutions in dozens of other countries less they be seen as antisemitic.
What argument? You know we can see in real time what Israeli government officials say and there’s daily real time streaming of settler terrorists stealing land every day.
What the American government funds with tax dollars should be chosen by the American people, via Congress. Choosing not to fund speech isn’t the same as prohibiting it.
That said, “chosen by the American people” needs to be broad enough that we’re not singling out individual universities and individual countries based on the power of their political lobbies.
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