GOP candidates want campus crackdowns on anti-Israel speech
As tensions mount on U.S. college campuses over the war in the Gaza Strip, several Republican presidential candidates are proposing a crackdown on students and schools that express opposition to Israel, appear to express support for the deadly Hamas attacks or fail to address antisemitism.
Former President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., have called for the federal government to revoke international students' visas, while others have suggested that universities should lose public funding.
After students at George Washington University projected messages on Tuesday onto the side of a campus building — including “Glory to our martyrs,” “Divestment from Zionist genocide now” and “Free Palestine from the river to the sea,” a phrase that encompasses all of Israel as well as Gaza and the West Bank — two candidates argued almost immediately that the students or the universities, or both, should be punished.
“If this was done by a foreign national, deport them,” Scott wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Wednesday morning. “If the college coddles them, revoke their taxpayer funding.”
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum wrote: “Antisemitism cannot be tolerated. Period. The students responsible should be held accountable and if the university fails to do so it should lose any federal funding.” He indicated in another post that he would “fully enforce” a Trumpera executive order to use Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to revoke federal funding for any university that “enables” antisemitism.
They and other Republicans are wading into an emotional debate on college campuses over Hamas' attack on Israel, Israel's bombardment of Gaza, and the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict — turning the opinions of individual students and student groups, starting at Harvard and New York University, into national flashpoints. Days of simultaneous pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel demonstrations have exposed painful divisions, including significant and potentially consequential ideological rifts between donors, students and faculty members.
The suggestion of punishing anti-Israel views is part of a broader campaign against liberal-leaning campus environments, which many Republicans claim indoctrinate students. But it is also in tension with other parts of that campaign: In many cases, the same candidates have previously condemned what they described as censorship of students who expressed conservative opinions.
Scott was a co-sponsor of a Senate resolution in 2021 that called on colleges and universities to “facilitate and recommit themselves to protecting the free and open exchange of ideas” and argued that “restrictive speech codes are inherently at odds with the freedom of speech guaranteed.”
Burgum signed legislation in North Dakota, also in 2021, that forbade universities in the state to discriminate against student organizations or speakers based on their viewpoint.
When asked where Scott drew the line between protected and unprotected speech, his campaign did not comment on the record but cited a previous statement in which he called it a “fine line.”
Burgum's campaign pointed to the Trump executive order as requiring action.
Separately, on Tuesday, the chancellor of the State University System of Florida wrote in a letter to university presidents that he had determined — “in consultation with” DeSantis — that two campus chapters of the group Students for Justice in Palestine “must be deactivated.”
The national Students for Justice in Palestine organization released guidance to campus chapters earlier this month calling for demonstrations “in support of our resistance in Palestine.”
The guidance called Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which killed more than 1,400 people, “a surprise operation against the Zionist enemy” and “a historic win for the Palestinian resistance.”
It added, “This is what it means to Free Palestine: not just slogans and rallies, but armed confrontation with the oppressors.”
The letter from the chancellor, Ray Rodrigues, said the chapters had violated a Florida law against providing “material support” to “a designated foreign terrorist organization.”
“The State University System will continue working with the Executive Office of the Governor and S.U.S.'s Board of Governors to ensure we are all using all tools at our disposal to crack down on campus demonstrations that delve beyond protected First Amendment speech into harmful support for terrorist groups,” it said.
“These measures could include necessary adverse employment actions and suspensions for school officials.”