In a letter organized by the AMCHA Initiative, 69 organizations, including the Brandeis Center, urged the Department of Education to ensure that National Resource Center (NRC) faculty do not implement academic boycotts at universities. The letter, addressed to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, gave two examples of recent events held at the University of Michigan and New York University, both of which were organized and funded by Department of Education-designated Middle East Studies NRCs. The letter notes that NRCs “were established by Title VI of the Higher Education Act in order to equip university students and faculty with a full and unbiased understanding of regions and countries vital to U.S. security. The federal legislation providing these NRCs with millions of taxpayer dollars stipulates that the funding is specifically intended ‘to promote access to research and training overseas, including through linkages with overseas institutions.” An academic boycott, however, as the letter points out, calls for the exact opposite: it seeks to deny access to research, training and education in and about the targeted country, and to break linkages with the targeted country’s educational institutions. And while faculty members certainly have the right to express support for BDS, including an academic boycott of Israel, were these NRC directors or any of their fellow faculty to implement the academic boycott at their centers in such a way as to restrict or limit the academic opportunities of their students or colleagues, their behavior would contravene the explicitly stated purpose of their federal funding. The official guidelines of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) encourage faculty to “work toward shutting down study abroad programs in Israel and refuse to write recommendations for students who want to attend them; scuttle their colleagues’ research collaborations with Israeli universities and scholars; and cancel or shut down educational events organized by students or faculty featuring Israeli leaders or scholars, or that seek to ‘normalize’ Israel by presenting it in anything but a negative light.” Any NRC that adheres to these boycott strategies would be in violation of their federal funding requirements. Overall, six of the 15 Middle East Studies NRCs have directors who have expressed public support for the academic boycott against Israel, and two others have directors who have called to shut down their university’s study abroad program in Israel. Additionally, all but one of the 15 NRCs have faculty members who support the academic boycott of Israel. Supporting the academic boycott of Israel does not necessarily mean that the NRC directors or faculty will fulfill the PACBI guidelines for a boycott. However, six NRC directors signed a letter in 2014 that stated, “we pledge not to collaborate on projects and events involving Israeli academic institutions.” Studies in 2016 and 2017 have shown that pro-BDS directors and faculty members are more likely to host events that either promote the BDS movement or host BDS speakers. When applying for Title VI HEOA grant applications, these pro-BDS directors have stated that their programs offer educational and research opportunities to study in and about Israel, as well as linkages with Israeli institutions. The letter notes, “Were these same directors to implement the academic boycott they publicly espouse, they would be working to subvert the very opportunities and linkages they have promised their programs would provide, which would constitute a fraudulent misrepresentation of their programs on a federal grant application.” The signatories to the letter emphasize that they “do not intend in any way to impede or suppress a faculty member’s freedom of speech or right to engage in a personal boycott. But were a faculty member to take steps to obstruct or prevent others from accessing opportunities to engage with overseas institutions through research or training, it would clearly violate the stated purpose of the law.” The 69 organizations offered the following recommendations to the Department of Education to address this problem: The Department of Education should issue a statement warning NRC directors and affiliated faculty that implementing an academic boycott of one of the countries in the NRC’s purview would be a direct subversion of the stated purpose of Title VI funding. Area studies program directors applying for or renewing NRC or FLAS funding should be required to sign a statement affirming that neither they nor any of their program’s affiliated faculty will, as part of their academic responsibilities, implement an academic boycott of any of the countries within the purview of their program in such a way as to restrict or limit the academic opportunities of their students or colleagues.