Thank you for spotlighting how radical political activists have gradually taken over AAUP and corrupted the professional organization. Too many liberals have been too naive for too long about the dangers posed by the coercive utopians devoted to systemic deconstruction of western institutions and transforming American society. Too many of these highly ideological activists have replaced the detached search for truth with a passionate commitment to imaginary global utopias.
I worked with the MN AAUP State conference for much of the 2010's and attended 3 national AAUP conferences in DC during that window. I even got to interact directly with the esteemed key note speaker Ibram Kendi during the 2015 conference in a session where the big complaint was that Bias Response Teams were not working out as expected. (The Bias response teams kept finding that the biggest proponents of bias incidents on their campuses were members of the very "protected" classes that the Bias response teams were allegedly created to support.) As you can see, the AAUP had already become pretty far Left progressive before my involvement but the blatant fostering of antisemitism was not something I expected. What appeared to be a minority voice in the conference in the early 2010's was no squashed as inappropriate and antithetical to the principles of the AAUP and has taken over the organization. It mirrors what has happened in the Democrat party with the take over by the progressives with their antisemitic beliefs. Sadly, the AAUP actually does represent the state of academia today. If the AAUP is beyond salvage, which I believe is true, much of academia is similarly beyond repair without a complete replacement of the existing faculty and staff of the institutions involved. At this point, I would advise the Trump administration to look to the lessons of history in how to achieve this by reviewing what needed to be done after World War II to repair German universities from their embrace of fascism. Mass terminations of faculty/staff and closure of institutions needs to be one the table and the input of academics is increasingly not going to be listened to in how reform of academia occurs. Just my thoughts.
The AAUP listserv, the de facto faculty forum at the University of Washington, provides extensive documentation of the educational malpractice committed by the AAUP leadership." First and foremost are 1. the disregard for evidence based truth, 2. the fabrication, teaching and dissemination of disinformation, 3. censorship of critical responses, and 4. refusal to engage in scholarly discourse. This was blatantly displayed post October 7, and persists to date.
Fortunately, a letter from UW Heterodox, and/or from FIRE to the public regulatory bodies would likely disempower the AAUP leadership at UW, and end their censorship of the faculty forum.
Regrettably, FIRE and Heterodox academy have joined forces with the AAUP to promote unrestrained free expression and academic freedom that is exempt from critical evaluation and divorced from evidence- based truth.
Regrettably, FIRE and Heterodox Academy have facilitated and repeatedly defended the expression of antisemitism. Please see FIRE's legal attack on NYU, in defense of NYU Student Bar Association President's endorsement of Hamas terrorism. Please view the Heterodox "Free the Inquiry." The inaugural two, and numerous subsequent essays, found it necessary to target Israel.
We have no influence on the AAUP, but members of Heterodox Academy and FIRE can redefine our missions, participate in the restructuring of education, and restore scholarly discourse (the pursuit of knowledge, truth...) in education. Is it likely that this will happen? or is it time for government intervention?
I strongly disagree with the claim that the AAUP is guilty of “disdain for free speech, its censoriousness, its obsession with identity politics and—you guess it right—its obligate antisemitism.” I think these attacks on the AAUP are inaccurate and unfair. To accuse the AAUP of “disdain for free speech” and “censoriousness” is simply false, and you offer no examples of this (and I refuted Lukianoff’s very weak arguments about this). So far this year, the AAUP has been the strongest voice for free speech against the worst attacks on it from the government that American colleges have ever witnessed. Where is this alleged “censoriousness”? As I’ve argued, opposing bans on DEI and diversity is not an obsession with identity politics, it’s an obsession with intellectual freedom. And it’s bizarre to make guilt-by-association accusations of “obligate antisemitism” because the AAUP issued a perfectly reasonable statement on boycotts and defends the rights of pro-Palestinian protesters along with everyone else’s rights. The claim that the AAUP is hypocritical–that it attacked the Trump Dear Colleague letter but never opposed the far more modest Obama-era one–is false, since the AAUP a decade ago issued a report on the “abuses of Title IX” that criticized the Obama administration and campus compliance. Finally you quote some “Babbling Beaver” who asks, “How many university regents, trustees, and governing board members will have their homes and businesses attacked by AAUP members during the next Day of Action?” The answer, it seems, was zero. The AAUP has its flaws, but it seems bizarre as a time of a massive assault on academic freedom to attack the organization that has been strongly defending it because of some minor policy quibbles.
Thank you for spotlighting how radical political activists have gradually taken over AAUP and corrupted the professional organization. Too many liberals have been too naive for too long about the dangers posed by the coercive utopians devoted to systemic deconstruction of western institutions and transforming American society. Too many of these highly ideological activists have replaced the detached search for truth with a passionate commitment to imaginary global utopias.
I worked with the MN AAUP State conference for much of the 2010's and attended 3 national AAUP conferences in DC during that window. I even got to interact directly with the esteemed key note speaker Ibram Kendi during the 2015 conference in a session where the big complaint was that Bias Response Teams were not working out as expected. (The Bias response teams kept finding that the biggest proponents of bias incidents on their campuses were members of the very "protected" classes that the Bias response teams were allegedly created to support.) As you can see, the AAUP had already become pretty far Left progressive before my involvement but the blatant fostering of antisemitism was not something I expected. What appeared to be a minority voice in the conference in the early 2010's was no squashed as inappropriate and antithetical to the principles of the AAUP and has taken over the organization. It mirrors what has happened in the Democrat party with the take over by the progressives with their antisemitic beliefs. Sadly, the AAUP actually does represent the state of academia today. If the AAUP is beyond salvage, which I believe is true, much of academia is similarly beyond repair without a complete replacement of the existing faculty and staff of the institutions involved. At this point, I would advise the Trump administration to look to the lessons of history in how to achieve this by reviewing what needed to be done after World War II to repair German universities from their embrace of fascism. Mass terminations of faculty/staff and closure of institutions needs to be one the table and the input of academics is increasingly not going to be listened to in how reform of academia occurs. Just my thoughts.
Thank you, again and again, for the Voice.
The AAUP listserv, the de facto faculty forum at the University of Washington, provides extensive documentation of the educational malpractice committed by the AAUP leadership." First and foremost are 1. the disregard for evidence based truth, 2. the fabrication, teaching and dissemination of disinformation, 3. censorship of critical responses, and 4. refusal to engage in scholarly discourse. This was blatantly displayed post October 7, and persists to date.
Fortunately, a letter from UW Heterodox, and/or from FIRE to the public regulatory bodies would likely disempower the AAUP leadership at UW, and end their censorship of the faculty forum.
Regrettably, FIRE and Heterodox academy have joined forces with the AAUP to promote unrestrained free expression and academic freedom that is exempt from critical evaluation and divorced from evidence- based truth.
Regrettably, FIRE and Heterodox Academy have facilitated and repeatedly defended the expression of antisemitism. Please see FIRE's legal attack on NYU, in defense of NYU Student Bar Association President's endorsement of Hamas terrorism. Please view the Heterodox "Free the Inquiry." The inaugural two, and numerous subsequent essays, found it necessary to target Israel.
We have no influence on the AAUP, but members of Heterodox Academy and FIRE can redefine our missions, participate in the restructuring of education, and restore scholarly discourse (the pursuit of knowledge, truth...) in education. Is it likely that this will happen? or is it time for government intervention?
https://weareall.com/pedagogical-malpractice/
https://hxstem.substack.com/p/appeal-to-redefine-academic-freedom
FIRE Miguided Mission:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G2UiRIG8CXMzqbictDdPvzAERSHfCPoqwyBStsLLZDI/edit?tab=t.0
https://www.thefire.org/sites/default/files/2023/10/FIRE%20Letter%20to%20New%20York%20University%20School%20of%20Law%2C%20October%2016%2C%202023.pdf
I strongly disagree with the claim that the AAUP is guilty of “disdain for free speech, its censoriousness, its obsession with identity politics and—you guess it right—its obligate antisemitism.” I think these attacks on the AAUP are inaccurate and unfair. To accuse the AAUP of “disdain for free speech” and “censoriousness” is simply false, and you offer no examples of this (and I refuted Lukianoff’s very weak arguments about this). So far this year, the AAUP has been the strongest voice for free speech against the worst attacks on it from the government that American colleges have ever witnessed. Where is this alleged “censoriousness”? As I’ve argued, opposing bans on DEI and diversity is not an obsession with identity politics, it’s an obsession with intellectual freedom. And it’s bizarre to make guilt-by-association accusations of “obligate antisemitism” because the AAUP issued a perfectly reasonable statement on boycotts and defends the rights of pro-Palestinian protesters along with everyone else’s rights. The claim that the AAUP is hypocritical–that it attacked the Trump Dear Colleague letter but never opposed the far more modest Obama-era one–is false, since the AAUP a decade ago issued a report on the “abuses of Title IX” that criticized the Obama administration and campus compliance. Finally you quote some “Babbling Beaver” who asks, “How many university regents, trustees, and governing board members will have their homes and businesses attacked by AAUP members during the next Day of Action?” The answer, it seems, was zero. The AAUP has its flaws, but it seems bizarre as a time of a massive assault on academic freedom to attack the organization that has been strongly defending it because of some minor policy quibbles.