Protect Economic and Academic Freedom Act of 2026

Floor Speech

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Ms. TLAIB. Mr. Speaker, this bill is an attack on free speech and academic freedom, all in the name of defending a genocidal apartheid state.

While the Trump administration is stripping universities of their funding, deporting international students, and pressuring universities to shut down their Black and African-American studies departments, Congress is voting today to force universities to pledge their loyalty to what? To a foreign government.

That is right. Support the Israeli Government and their war crimes or lose Federal student aid.

Boycotts are protected free speech and an important tool for social change, from the civil rights movement to today. Academic boycotts had helped bring down the apartheid state in South Africa, as well as abolish segregation right here at home.

This is not about protecting our Jewish neighbors because many of the boycotts and the divestment movements on campuses are led by Jewish students who were yelling: Not in our name.

Do you know what this is about? I will show you. This is about protecting an image like this from Israel's National Security Minister this week. This is what he put up on social media, showing the fate that he has planned for the Palestinian people.

What is this? This is an image of Palestinians walking into a gas chamber. This is what students are boycotting.

Yet, here we are, punishing them for speaking out against this, speaking out against ethnic cleansing, genocide, and bombings of hospitals, schools, and refugee camps.

This bill is a clear assault on higher education for millions of working-class students who depend on Federal student aid to get an education. A vote for this bill is a betrayal of those promising young students, denying them the right to an education. Why? Because they want to save lives, no matter their faith or ethnicity.

The Trump administration is committed to dismantling higher education and public education in our country. We all see it, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. First, it is a ban on boycotting an apartheid government state, and then it is going to be a ban on divesting from fossil fuels, or maybe teachers will be banned based on what teachers are teaching now.

We need to stand against this attack on academic freedom and stand up for students. They are doing what is right in our history, and I am not going to wait a decade for people to apologize for it, because they are trying to save lives. It is their constitutional right to be able to boycott and run campaigns that are peaceful and saying: Enough is enough. Not with our dime, and not in our name.

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