The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Postsecondary Education (OPE) recently announced they were seeking specialists to serve as peer reviewers for their 2018 Title VI–Office of International and Foreign Language Education (IFLE) grant competitions. Among the programs offering funding in 2018 include the National Resource Centers Program, which “provides grants to establish, strengthen, and operate centers that serve as national resources for teaching, training, and research in modern languages and area studies.” For more information on how to become a Peer Reviewer for Title VI grants, you can click here. As the Brandeis Center and many other organizations have long pointed out, these programs, which receive federal funding under Title VI of the Higher Education Opportunities Act (HEOA), are far from objective and often incorporate biased, anti-Israel programming as part of the curriculum. In January, the Brandeis Center, along with thirteen other national Jewish, educational and civil rights organizations, co-authored a letter to the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, urging the Committee to amend Title VI of the HEOA and approve certain sections of Title VI of the PROSPER Act as adopted by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which also seeks to reauthorize the HEOA. Title VI of the HEOA provides federal funding to international studies and foreign language centers at universities nationwide. Enacted to advance national security and international relations interests, and requiring centers to “reflect diverse perspective and a wide range of views,” Title VI has fallen far short of its original goal. In reality, many of these centers conflict with these original aims by suppressing the academic freedom of students and faculty with contrarian views. This one-sided story telling is especially relevant when it comes to the Near Eastern Studies Centers’ teachings on Israel, which is frequently biased and often offers only an anti-Israel perspective. Previously, in a 2014 Joint Statement, the Brandeis Center and 9 other concerned organizations authored a Joint Statement to Congress on the misuse of federal funding under Title VI. Also in 2014, the Brandeis Center authored a White Paper on “The Morass of Middle East Studies: Title VI of the Higher Education Act and Federally Funded Area Studies.” This analysis of Middle East Studies programs yielded several important findings, including that “no proper complaint-resolution procedure exists to ensure compliance with the HEOA’s key Diverse Perspectives requirement.” Building on this analysis, the Brandeis Center posited several recommendations to universities, the Department of Education, and Congress. Included in these recommendations was for the Department of Education to ensure compliance by strictly evaluating each application of Title VI funding and periodically monitoring each program. The PROSPER Act, which has already made it out of the House Committee, offers several marked improvements to Title VI funding process that would substantially cut down on these centers’ pernicious anti-Israel rhetoric. As both the House and Senate aim to amend the HEOA during its reauthorization, Congress has an opportunity to end Title VI’s discriminatory funding.