AAUP Disgraces Itself By Ending Opposition to Academic Boycotts

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The American Association of University Professors announces that it has dropped its opposition to academic boycotts. Image credit: Justin Morrison via Inside Higher Ed

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP)—once a venerable organization—has been steadily moving towards a radical agenda, abandoning its noble mission of advancing academic freedom,

The mission of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) is to advance academic freedom and shared governance; to define fundamental professional values and standards for higher education; to promote the economic security of faculty, academic professionals, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and all those engaged in teaching and research in higher education; to help the higher education community organize to make our goals a reality; and to ensure higher education's contribution to the common good,

in favor of Critical Social Justice.

USC’s AAUP chapter has been conspicuously silent when the academic freedom and freedom of speech of our colleagues have been infringed upon (for example, the Strauss and Patton cases), yet they did not hesitate to issue a statement defending the lawlessness and hooliganism on our campus. As we wrote in our April 27 Newsletter:

The USC Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has issued a statement about the protests, criticizing the university’s actions towards restoring order on campus, such as bringing in the LAPD to remove the hooligans and their encampments. We wonder what is the mission of this organization.

Beyond USC, AAUP chapters at Barnard and Colombia have issued statements protesting the punishment of students who engaged in these violent and unlawful protests. They also protested the involvement of the NYPD to restore order.

Now AAUP has reached another milestone in their mission creep—they have released a new statement announcing the end of their longstanding opposition to academic boycotts. Academic boycotts fundamentally contradict the bedrock principles of open inquiry, unfettered intellectual exchange, and academic freedom. In 2005, AAUP condemned them, but now their position has changed.

According to the Inside Higher Ed article “AAUP Ends Two-Decade Opposition to Academic Boycotts” (August 12, 2024):

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has dropped its nearly 20-year-old categorical opposition to academic boycotts, in which scholars and scholarly groups refuse to work or associate with targeted universities. The reversal, just like the earlier statement, comes amid war between Israelis and Palestinians.

In 2005, near the end of the second intifada, a Palestinian uprising, the AAUP denounced such boycotts; the following year, it said they “strike directly at the free exchange of ideas.” That statement has now been replaced by one saying boycotts “can be considered legitimate tactical responses to conditions that are fundamentally incompatible with the mission of higher education.” The new statement doesn’t mention Israel, Palestine or other current events—but the timing isn’t coincidental.

The new position says that “when faculty members choose to support academic boycotts, they can legitimately seek to protect and advance the academic freedom and fundamental rights of colleagues and students who are living and working under circumstances that violate that freedom and one or more of those rights.”

In response to the AAUP statement, the Academic Engagement Network (AEN) has released the statement “Response to the AAUP’s ‘Statement on Academic Boycotts'” condemning this act:

We are deeply concerned that this AAUP reversal will legitimize efforts to boycott Israeli higher education. Its new “Statement on Academic Boycotts” comes at a time when universities across the United States are facing pressures to cut ties with Israeli academic institutions over the war in Gaza, and when Israeli scientists and students are being subjected to an alarming degree of ostracism. The AAUP’s new stance will undoubtedly be referenced by scholar-activists in order to justify these pernicious activities to shun and isolate Israeli academics.

The AAUP’s new statement, approved by its Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure last month and now adopted by its national Council, supersedes the association’s 2006 report that rejected “systematic academic boycott” as a threat to the core values that define the academy, including the “principles of free expression and communication on which we collectively depend.” Notwithstanding that some of the association’s members, including those in leadership positions, found this categorical opposition to academic boycotts “controversial,” for nearly twenty years the AAUP has rightly held firm to the view that academic boycotts are contrary to its mission of protecting the academy as a forum for free scholarly inquiry.

Today, this longstanding policy is in no need of any “reconsideration.” Indeed, given current harmful trends that are so detrimental to the open exchange of ideas, the AAUP should not be dropping its opposition to academic boycotts. It should instead be doubling down to galvanize support from the scholarly community to uphold a principle that is foundational to scholarly pursuits—not chipping away at and undercutting it.

Academic boycotts inevitably—and inequitably—harm scholars. The AAUP’s insistence in its new statement that institutional boycotts can be implemented without targeting “individual scholars and teachers engaged in ordinary academic practices” is untenable.

As has been well documented in numerous recent reports and surveys, the boycott of srael’s universities and colleges cannot be meaningfully separated from the faculty and students who work, teach, and study in them. In fact, boycotts are akin to a blacklist, punishing academics on the basis of their nationality, political views, and the policies and actions of their government.

Back in 2005, also amid devastating hostilities between Israelis and Palestinians, the AAUP correctly denounced academic boycotts because they “strike directly at the free exchange of ideas.” This is as true today as it was then. Academic boycotts violate freedom of communication and relationships among scholars, students, and academic institutions. They should not be considered “legitimate tactical responses” to disagreement, however intense, over the policies of foreign governments.

Boycotting academic institutions ostensibly in order to defend academic freedom is completely nonsensical. There are many ways in which AAUP members can work to support freedoms and rights for scholars and students around the world without implementing discriminatory activities, severing ties among cross-national researchers, and denying their own students the educational opportunity to study abroad.

Earlier, AEN circulated an open letter, “United Against the Academic Boycott of Israel.” It has already been signed by more than 3,000 scholars worldwide—please add your signature to the letter if you have not already done so.

If you are a current AAUP member, now might be a good time to quit this pathetic organization, which has completely lost its way. AEN also recommends other actions individual scholars and organizations can take, which you can read about in their newsletter.

Update (08/15): A new open letter Against Academic Boycotts is circulating now:

The AAUP does not speak for us. We call on our fellow scholars to join us in opposing boycotts of fellow scholars wherever they might reside and be employed.