A Democrat-controlled panel in the Virginia Senate struck down a bill aimed at quelling student organizations that support “terrorist activities.”
Legislators killed the GOP-backed bill Monday after speakers raised concerns about free speech for students supporting Palestinians, though a companion bill is in the Virginia House, the Virginia Mercury reported. The Virginia legislation, focused on campus activism, reflects a broader policy push by conservatives and members of Congress to quell the radical anti-Israel movement.
“I think what we’re trying to do is make sure that our learning environments are places to learn and not to have fear be a part of that,” Republican State Sen. Bill Stanley, who introduced the bill, said in the local paper. “It does not shut down discourse or dialogue.”
Stanley’s Senate Bill 1284 bans access to public college campuses for terrorist groups, those providing “funds or other material support or resources” to such groups and those who “support” them or “attempts to solicit” others to support them.
Stanley did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Democratic State Sen. Mamie Locke, who chairs the Virginia Senate’s Higher Education Subcommittee, did not immediately respond to an inquiry about how each subcommittee member voted on the bill. Three Democrats and two Republicans sit on the panel.
Virginia saw multiple incidents related to anti-Israel student activists last spring, including an encampment at the University of Virginia that police cleared out and clashes between protesters and police at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Two leaders of a Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at George Mason University were also banned from campus in December for vandalizing a student center, the Washington Free Beacon reported. Law enforcement searched their home and found weapons, Hamas and Hezbollah flags and signs that read “death to Jews” and “death to America.”
The U.S. House passed a bipartisan bill in November that would strip the tax-exempt status of nonprofits providing “material support or resources” to foreign terrorist groups, adding to other restrictions in federal law against terrorism financing. Anti-Israel groups have portrayed the bill as an effort to silence people who defend the rights of Palestinians.
We’re in Congress, and we’re raising the alarm about HR 9495, a dangerous bill that threatens civil rights and gives Trump the power to label any organization he dislikes as a “supporter of terrorism.” This could silence groups advocating for human rights, justice, and policies… pic.twitter.com/ye959Wnl9b
— Medea Benjamin (@medeabenjamin) November 18, 2024
“This bill will only heighten the persecution of human rights activists by failing to define these terms clearly and explicitly,” a speaker told the Virginia legislature Monday regarding Stanley’s legislation. “This bill risks criminalizing legitimate forms of protest, academic inquiry and advocacy, and in this particular moment, we must note that this has extremely concerning impacts on the discourse surrounding Palestine, which is under increasing scrutiny by governments that funnel our tax paying dollars towards genocide destruction.”
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