Reactions to AAUP Decision on Academic Boycotts

The decision of the American Association of Woke University Professors (AAWUP) to end their opposition to academic boycotts, which we covered in our August 13 post, has generated deservedly scathing criticism. Below, we share some of the reactions that organizations and individuals championing free speech and academic freedom have voiced, open letters that have been circulated, and noteworthy news coverage that has been published.

Open Letters

An open letter, “Against Academic Boycotts,” co-organized by Cary Nelson, past-president (2006–2012) of the AAUP, has already gathered thousands signatures (consider adding your name, if you have not already done so). The letter says, in part:

We believe the AAUP’s new position is wrong-headed and dangerous. We cannot safeguard academic freedom by violating academic freedom. Normalizing academic boycotts poses a profound threat to academic freedom.

and

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.

In a Zoom event yesterday with Heterodox Academy president John Tomasi, Cary Nelson called the AAUP’s abandonment of its opposition to academic boycotts a “self-inflicted wound,” which he predicts will lead to the downfall of the organization.

We also remind the readers about an earlier letter, “United Against the Academic Boycott of Israel,” circulated by the Academic Engagement Network.

Heterodox Academy

John Tomasi, the President of the Heterodox Academy has issued a statement, “HxA Statement on AAUP’s Reversal on Academic Boycotts” (August 19, 2024). He places AAUP’s decision in historic perspective, describing cases in which the organization stood firm against academic boycotts. Tomasi then explains why academic boycotts are incompatible with academic freedom:

Everyone has a right to engage in political activism. But when political activism threatens the defining purpose of a profession, that profession must prioritize its raison d’etre over activism. Academic boycotts are pernicious precisely because they bring the urge for political activism and the obligations of the academic profession into direct conflict.

Imagine a surgeon who decides not to use the best hip-replacement device on patients because that line of devices comes from a country whose foreign policy he abhors (a policy, let's imagine, that he believes violates basic rights of humans in other countries). Moreover, he stops prescribing that device to his patients because he wants to support political activists who have called for systematic action against that country (a “medical boycott”).

No credible association of medical professionals would condone such actions by that surgeon. To do so would be to reject the health-providing imperative that defines medicine as a profession. In the field of medicine, a doctor who refuses to provide the best available medical care to his patients because he instead wanted to support some purely political agenda would likely face the loss of his medical license, and would face other forms of legal jeopardy as well.

But what about the case of scholars? Should political science professors be free to exclude from their undergrad syllabi articles and studies produced by scholars from countries whose foreign or domestic policies they personally abhor? Can a member of a faculty search committee in classics, who has a fiduciary obligation to his university to identify and recommend the best candidate for the job, decide to vote and speak against any candidate who is from some country he wishes to see boycotted? Indeed, should a physicist refuse to attend an important conference hosted by a university in a country whose foreign policy he personally abhors, even if findings from the conference are fundamental to the extension of our knowledge in that specialized area?…

In affirming that professors have a right to engage in academic boycotts, the AAUP has abandoned an ideal that is close to the core of the scholarly profession itself. That ideal roots the rights and responsibilities of the academic profession in the search for knowledge. Erstwhile defenders of academic freedom, and of the rights and responsibilities of self-governance that attend it, the AAUP has walked off the field.

Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE)

“FIRE’s Position on Academic Boycotts Has Not Changed” (The FIRE, August 14, 2024):

[O]ur position has not changed, nor will it. FIRE stands ready to defend freedom of expression and freedom of conscience for students and faculty nationwide, just as we have always done. But while we defend the rights of individual students and faculty, we oppose academic boycotts as a threat to academic freedom.

Writing for The FIRE, Robert Shibley takes a deep dive into the issue (“How Academic Boycotts Threaten Academic Freedom,” August 20, 2024):

FIRE continues to oppose systematic academic boycotts.

Writing about the BDS movement nearly a decade ago, FIRE President Greg Lukianoff argued that there was no way to reconcile academic boycotts of a nation’s institutions or scholars with academic freedom. He noted that academic freedom “relies on open communication across lines of difference in a global system of checking, arguing, researching, collaborating, and competing to produce better ideas,” and that preventing scholars from working with peers from a particular nation “in the name of opposing that country’s government is incompatible with this open, liberal system.” 

Editorials and Op-Eds

Image source: “The AAUP Abandons Academic Freedom,” The Chronicle of Higher Education.

“The AAUP Abandons Academic Freedom” (The Chronicle of Higher Education, Cary Nelson, August 13, 2024)

Past AAUP president Cary Nelson has penned a searing essay:

I predict that hundreds of those and other individual micro-boycotts of Jewish and Israeli students and faculty will be initiated during the 2024-25 academic year as a consequence of the AAUP policy change. There will also be dedicated group efforts to criminalize collaborative research projects between faculty in America and Israel, projects that often entail institutional endorsement and support….

Throughout the Middle East and elsewhere — whether in Egypt, Iran, Russia, Syria, Turkey, and many other countries — there are institutions that have little to no academic freedom. For a time they will nonetheless be held harmless. But not for long. In 2005 the AAUP understood that, unless the opposition to academic boycotts was honored as a universal principle, innumerable debates about boycotting universities in various countries would ensue, and academic boycotts would become routine. The AAUP is now willing to pay that price in the service of its growing anti-Zionism.

It supports that consequence by issuing a fundamental concession to anti-Zionism, declaring that “academic boycotts are not in themselves violations of academic freedom; rather, they can be considered legitimate tactical responses to conditions that are fundamentally incompatible with the mission of higher education.” No principles are any longer at stake in academic boycotts. They are mere tactical matters….

Part of what the AAUP, almost comically in my view, seeks to do is to imply that group boycott actions are the collective result of considered decisions by individuals. It would be perhaps the first time in history that reflective philosopher kings alone have organized mass action. We know that social pressure is at least as likely to be responsible….

Germany’s Friedrich-Alexander University produces an Academic Freedom Index that ranks 179 countries worldwide. The 2024 update places Israeli universities in the upper 20 to 30 percent, substantially higher than those in the United States. The AAUP has made a political decision based not on fact but rather on prejudice. Jewish students and faculty will suffer unjustly as a consequence. Their individual academic freedom and right to be protected from a hostile educational environment will be compromised. We must no longer use AAUP policy as the gold standard for academic freedom.

“AAUP Faces Criticism for Reversal on Academic Boycotts” (Inside Higher Ed, Ryan Quinn, August 16, 2024):

Keith Whittington, the founding chair of another group, the Academic Freedom Alliance, posted on X the day the AAUP’s new stance was revealed. He said the AAUP had changed. “The transformation of the AAUP continues,” Whittington wrote. “This particular switch seemed inevitable given how activist academia was trending.” He said the Academic Freedom Alliance hasn’t taken “an explicit position about boycotts,” and acknowledged that some might be more justifiable than others, but he’s “pretty skeptical” about whether they can be compatible with academic freedom concerns.

“A Faculty Group’s Ideological Transformation Continues as It Ends Opposition to Academic Boycotts” (National Review, Matthew Wilson, August 13, 2024):

Faculty who believe that norms of academic freedom should not be contingent upon viewpoint or ideological persuasion would do well to disaffiliate themselves from the AAUP and consider joining an organization like the Academic Freedom Alliance, which defends professors of all ideological stripes at risk of having their academic-freedom rights violated. The faculty ideologues who in recent years have taken over the AAUP have transformed it into a hyperprogressive activist group.

“Going Off the ‘Gold Standard’” (City Journal, Joshua Katz, August 15, 2024):

Matthew X. Wilson ends his National Review article on the AAUP’s decision by suggesting that faculty members “disaffiliate themselves from the AAUP and consider joining an organization like the Academic Freedom Alliance, which defends professors of all ideological stripes at risk of having their academic-freedom rights violated.” As a founding member of the AFA, I enthusiastically second the idea.

“The AAUP Is Wrong” (AEIdeas, Samuel Abrams, August 12, 2024):

The AAUP represents itself as a group that defines fundamental professional values and standards for higher education and strives to ensure higher education’s contribution to the common good. To the AAUP, boycotts are now acceptable when they “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.” While there is some ambiguity in the text of the AAUP policy change, advocating for academic boycotts in any real form is at odds with the promotion of the common good.

“The AAUP’s Incoherent New Boycott Policy” (Chronicle of Higher Ed, Jeffrey Sachs, August 16, 2024):

The American Association of University Professors’ new policy on academic boycotts is a tempest in a teapot. Or maybe it’s a disaster in the making. I can’t make up my mind because I’m not quite certain what the policy means. Even worse, the AAUP doesn’t seem to know either. While recognizing the right of each individual academic to refuse collaboration with a given university, it has opposed what it calls a “systematic academic boycott” — that is to say, the coordinated refusal of multiple faculty members or an academic institution to work with a targeted university. The organization fails to see it has opened the door to chaos.

“The AAUP Sells Out to Pro-Hamas Radicals” (National Review, George Leef, August 21, 2024):

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) used to be a worthwhile professional organization, but like ever so many professional organizations, it has been infiltrated by people who want to use it for their ideological purposes. (Think ACLU, American Bar Association, American Medical Association and others in this regard.) The AAUP recently besmirched itself by embracing the concept of academic boycotts, as long as they are aimed at a leftists’ villain such as Israel.

The article quotes our Substack post.

“More Than 1,000 Scholars Sign Petition Against AAUP for Supporting Academic Boycotts” (The College Fix, Virginia King, August 19, 2024):

An open letter that opposes the American Association of University Professors’ new position to support academic boycotts quickly gained over 1,000 signatures from scholars and faculty upset by the recent decision.

“We believe the AAUP’s new position is wrong-headed and dangerous,” the petition states. “We cannot safeguard academic freedom by violating academic freedom. Normalizing academic boycotts poses a profound threat to academic freedom.”

That article, too, cites our Substack post!

“The AAUP Threatens Academic Freedom by Changing Its Tune on Boycotts” (Harvard Crimson, Jeffrey Flier, August 19, 2024):

If the drafters of the new AAUP policy are indeed aware that academics in many countries lack the fundamental freedoms essential to the effective pursuit of knowledge, do they support boycotts of institutions in those countries? If they do not support such boycotts, why not? Such questions cannot be ignored, especially as an actual movement for boycott, divestment, and sanctions — colloquially, BDS — uniquely targets a single country: Israel. While the faults of the Israeli government can and should be debated, it cannot be seriously argued that Israel uniquely lacks the freedoms the AAUP claims to hold as foundational to institutions of higher education….

Rather than addressing a real problem through a balanced and critical inquiry, the new policy reflects a prevalent and superficial strain of academic political activism that will only intensify the problem.

From an organization named the American Association of University Professors, we deserve better.

Response by AAUP’s Leadership

Rana Jaleel and Todd Wolfson responded to criticisms in “The AAUP Has Always Defended Academic Freedom. We Still Do” essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education (August 21, 2024). Jaleel, who is Associate Professor of Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies at UC Davis, currently serves on the AAUP Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure. Wolfson, an Associate Professor of Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers, is AAUP’s current president. Jaleel and Wolfson dismiss the substantive critiques by Nelson and others. They write:

Faculty members possess academic freedom as individuals and as the faculty — as a collective, decision-making body. The AAUP’s new “Statement on Academic Boycotts” recognizes the collective and individual rights of faculty members to decide democratically to support a systematic academic boycott as long as that boycott does not “involve any political or religious litmus tests [or] target individual scholars and teachers engaged in ordinary academic practices, such as publishing scholarship, delivering lectures and conference presentations, or participating in research collaborations.” The faculty’s collective decision-making does not automatically violate an individual’s academic freedom, generally, and in the case of academic boycotts specifically, we further stipulate that individuals should retain the ability to participate or not in the collective decision with impunity. There is and should be no academic-boycott police….

Economic strikes and academic boycotts are intended to have consequences. Both place pressure on the institution to comply with demands, whether those are economic demands such as paying a living wage to the workers on strike or demands that a university provide fundamental rights such as academic freedom or physical security for all individuals associated with or seeking access to it.

The emphasis on the collective versus the individual is a telltale sign of the ideology that now governs the AAUP. Indeed, this organization has supported recent unionization efforts on university campuses. Their concluding paragraph makes it abundantly clear that AAUP has become yet another Critical Social Justice organization:

As Nelson Mandela told the African National Congress: “In some cases … it might be correct to boycott, and in others it might be unwise and dangerous. In still other cases another weapon of political struggle might be preferred. A demonstration, a protest march, a strike, or civil disobedience might be resorted to, all depending on the actual conditions at the given time.”

Both the 2006 report and the 2024 statement cite that quotation approvingly. Cary Nelson nonetheless thinks otherwise. Between the two Nelsons, the AAUP sides with Mandela.

We conclude this post by repeating our recommendation:

If you are a current AAUP member, now might be a good time to quit this pathetic organization, which has completely lost its way.