algemeiner.com · The Algemeiner · September 8, 2026
Jewish Groups Praise US House for Passing Bill to Cut Aid From Colleges Promoting BDS, Antisemitism | Algemeiner.com
Tuesday, September 8th | 26 Elul 5786
by Dion J. Pierre
An American flag flies outside the US Capitol building at sunset, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, US, Jan. 30, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Kylie Cooper
Jewish advocacy groups have praised the US House of Representatives for passing the Protect Economic and Academic Freedom Act to restrict federal aid to colleges promoting academic iterations of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
The measure, which passed last week with 237 members voting “yes” and 169 opposing it, would, if signed into law, take several steps to prohibit institutions of higher education from receiving federal student aid if they engage in commercial and academic boycotts promoted by the BDS movement.
Under the legislation, colleges must also ensure that students are able to participate in academic programs in Israel and that Israeli students and faculty are able to participate in their own programs.
The BDS movement seeks to isolate Israel from the international community as a step toward its eventual elimination. Leaders of the movement have repeatedly stated their goal is to destroy the world’s only Jewish state.
Aspects of academic BDS include calling for denying letters of recommendation to Jewish students applying to study abroad in Israel or assigning them poor marks for refusing to replicate false anti-Zionist claims in their papers and exams.
Praising the House’s move as an advancement of Jewish civil rights, the AMCHA Initiative, a Jewish advocacy group based in California, noted that academic BDS has swept across higher education like a wildfire, subsuming it in the flames of censorship, partisan scholarship, and the legitimization of antisemitism as a theory of politics.
“The House’s bipartisan passage of this bill brings long overdue attention to the serious consequences of academic boycotts, which research shows not only incite antisemitism and hurt Jewish students, but also subvert the academic mission of the entire institution and harm everyone — including American students,” said AMCHA cofounder Tammi Rossman-Benjamin. “Academic boycotts restrict educational opportunity, distort academic decision making, and inflame hostility toward students and faculty identified with the country or people being boycotted.”
The Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) also commended lawmakers, with US Affairs president Alyza Lewin saying that “academic boycotts of Israel harm American students and scholars, weaken vital US-Israel collaboration, and lend the credibility of American universities to a discriminatory campaign that singles out the only Jewish state.”
Karen Paikin Barall of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, which has litigated a slew of civil rights complaints on behalf of Jewish students, said, “We are encouraged by this important first step toward preventing discrimination. The Senate should move quickly to pass this bill and ensure that higher education institutions across the country are focused on education, not politics.”
AMCHA’s commenting on the news is timely, as it recently published a study arguing that higher education’s promotion of the charge that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and the West Bank has wreaked profound consequences beyond faculty’s professional world, foremost of which being a pandemic of antisemitic hate crimes that has altered the face of American politics.
Speaking to The Algemeiner last Monday, Rossman-Benjamin explained that the report is groundbreaking for exposing that the increasing popularity of accusing Israel of genocide was not caused by any new discovery regarding the conduct of Israel’s military conduct but by a predisposition linked to past BDS support.
Lawmakers believe the Protect Economic and Academic Freedom Act can improve the situation for Jewish campus life.
“No student, no professor should be shut out of research, study abroad opportunities, or academic partnerships, or feel unwelcome in the classroom because of where they’re from or what religion they practice. Yet that’s exactly what the [BDS] movement seeks to do — targeting one country and one religion: Israel and Judaism,” US Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), who co-authored the bill with Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), said in a statement. “My bipartisan bill with Congresswoman Foxx is narrow and targeted — it doesn’t touch anyone’s speech, protest, or academic debate. It simply says that if your university takes federal taxpayer dollars, it can’t discriminate against academic partnerships or investments with one country. That’s it.”
Foxx added that, by passing this bill, the House “sent a clear message: if an institution of higher education chooses to capitulate to the caustic BDS movement, there will be consequences – starting with this bipartisan legislation.”
Foxx added a stern warning to higher education officials, saying, “The antisemitic rot that has corroded college campuses must be eradicated — enough is enough. The safety and security of Jewish students, faculty, and stand should never be threatened under any circumstances.”
J Street, a progressive Zionist group which is deeply critical of Israel, issued one of the Jewish community’s few dissenting opinions on the measure days before it reached the House floor.
“J Street believes the most effective way to counter antisemitism on college campuses is through open debate, education, and renewed efforts to achieve a peaceful resolution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict, not through punitive legislation aimed to curb the freedom to boycott,” it said.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.