Thom Tillis Quotes

Shake any institution of higher learning, and a dozen boycotters will fall out of it.

The BDS movement goes way beyond any legitimate, reasonable criticism of a government.

There is a revolution in Germany, and we must ask ourselves, "Is there a revolution in the university?" No. The fighting is still in the skirmishing stage.

A boycott is the most peaceful and passive kind of protest there is and can be. We do not say we hate you or even say that you are wrong. We just say that we don’t want to ride your bus.

'Boycott caused all the trouble,' they say, as if I could have canvassed all those people personally to take a stand in 1983. Nonsense! The committee were the ones with the power to make the decisions, not me. They started the unrest, they did the sackings, and they reaped what they sowed.

When you say to Israelis, 'European boycott,' they think it means that this year they won't get Camembert cheese on time... That is not the case.

The founder of the BDS movement is blatantly anti-Semitic.

I applaud Lt. Gov. Mark Hutchison and the legislators in the Nevada State Senate who have introduced SB 26 to fight the BDS movement in Nevada.

I've been fighting BDS before people even knew that BDS existed.

Conservatives recognize that college campuses and their frames of reality have an outsized impact on the culture, training the next generation of leaders.

Under the guise of BDS, Jewish students on college campuses across the United States are being subjected to blatant anti-Semitism.

BDS attempts to use economic tools to boycott Israeli goods and services and punish individuals and entities supporting Israel. It attempts to use harassment and intimidation to turn Israel's supporters against the country.

BDS is not a typical act of political correctness, undertaken by radical academics whose usual prey is the youth of America. This is a worldwide movement designed to destroy the one democracy in the Middle East and the hopes of people who have occupied that land for over three thousand years.

I remember a time when you were protesting on the street together with your professors, with your union, with your school organizations. Everybody was in the streets. Now, everybody is kept alone in his box, in this fragile condition, afraid of losing tenure.

I think that the movement is weak in Zimbabwe, much weaker than it is in Italy for example, much weaker than it is in Spain, much weaker than it is even in Germany, although there the groups are small they are very vociferous and you get them speaking loudly and organising.

The avowed policy of non-co-operation has been not to make political use of the disputes between labour and capital.

As far as we're concerned, there was no sporting organisation [that] should have anything to do with the sport in South Africa.

I watched a documentary about Freedom Riders. One young woman told her parents, 'I'm going to leave college to ride and represent the future.' I thought, 'Who would do that now?' Who would do that for my son?"

All of us in the Senate live in an iron lung-the iron lung of politics, and it is no easy task to emerge from that rarified atmosphere in order to breathe the same fresh air our constituents breathe.

[Students for a Democratic Society] was on many campuses and it was a powerful organization. It was founded by Tom Hayden, who passed away very recently. It was one of the founders of SDS and that chief writer of the Port Huron Statement, which is still worth reading. It's kind of the Bernie Sanders campaign document in a funny way.

I believe America went wrong in terms of respecting the First Amendment, the state of free speech on American college campuses and on the media and in academia.

Sanctions kept us on our toes, it made us realize that we were drifting into a situation of growing isolation so I wouldn't go as far as to say sanctions didn't play a role but if I were to put on a scale, the issues of conscience played a much greater role than the sanctions. We could have withstood sanctions for many more years. We became experts in circumventing sanctions... So sanctions played a role but it wasn't the major role.

Today most funding for science comes through government. That means that you have to be known to be sympathetic to conclusions that are acceptable to the political classes.

One modest suggestion for my friends in the academic community: the next time a mob of students, waving their non-negotiable demands, starts pitching bricks and rocks at the student union- just imagine they are wearing brown shirts or white sheets- and act accordingly.

With the corporatization and privatization of higher education, it is increasingly more difficult for colleges and universities to expand and deepen democratic public life, produce engaged critical citizens, and operate as democratic public spheres.