Horowitz’s proposed legislation has yet to be adopted by any state. Georgia did pass a resolution recommending that state universities adopt the document. In Congress, the text was introduced as a resolution by Georgia congressman Jack Kingston in 2003, but has stalled since then.
Horowitz has been pushing the legislation for a number of years, but it has only been in recent months that the effort has picked up steam in several states — including Minnesota, Ohio and Rhode Island — amid a string of controversial campus incidents. The University of Colorado has been under pressure to fire professor Ward Churchill since it emerged that the teacher had compared victims of September 11, 2001, to Nazis and argued that they were responsible for the attacks. In New York, the Columbia University campus has been rocked by accusations that pro-Palestinian professors intimidated pro-Israel students.
Supporters of the legislation have been motivated in part by events at Columbia and at other campuses, where Jewish groups have charged that there is a persistent anti-Israel bias in teaching about the Middle East. Opponents of the Florida bill have said that, among other dangers, the measure could force professors to give a platform to Holocaust deniers. This fear, they said, springs from a clause in the Florida legislation that demands professors “make their students aware of serious scholarly viewpoints other than their own