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Academic Boycotts From AAUP Would be ‘Catastrophe for Jewish Students’

Academic Boycotts From AAUP Would be ‘Catastrophe for Jewish Students’

“not just a catastrophe for Jewish students and faculty, but for the future of higher education in America”

The American Association of University Professors is embracing BDS tactics. This is a horrible development.

Algemeiner reports:

‘Catastrophe for Jewish Students’: Historic Body of University Professors Approves Academic Boycotts

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has issued a statement in support of academic boycotts, a seismic decision which reverses decades of policy and clears the way for scholar activists to escalate their efforts to purge the university of Zionism and educational partnerships with Israel.

“We … recognize that the committee’s position opposing academic boycotts has been controversial, contested, and used to compromise academic freedom,” the organization said in a statement issued on Monday. “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 such contexts, 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.”

Coming amid a bitter debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on college campuses and Israel’s war to eradicate Hamas from the Gaza Strip, the statement does not mention the Jewish State specifically. However, its countenancing the anti-Israel boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement — whose proponents believe that expelling Zionism from major cultural institutions is a first step toward Israel’s destruction — is clear, higher education watchdog AMCHA Initiative said on Monday.

“The AAUP’s decision to green-light academic BDS and reverse a decades-long policy opposing it is not just a catastrophe for Jewish students and faculty, but for the future of higher education in America,” it said. “By giving license to an academic boycott that encourages faculty to replace genuine scholarship with political activism whose express goal is to destroy the Jewish state and rid US campuses of Zionism and Zionists, the organization that has been setting the standards on academic freedom since 1915 just made a mockery of every single one of its own standards and is unleashing a tsunami of academic antisemitism that will echo the darkest chapters of Jewish history.”

Another higher education group, Faculty Against Antisemitism Movement (FAAM) described the AAUP’s decision as “wrong,” arguing that “academic boycotts contradict core principles of our higher education system — open inquiry, unfettered intellectual exchange, and academic freedom. And they are a core tactic of the BDS movement.”

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Comments

Herve Montague | August 16, 2024 at 8:43 am

Is it too easy, too inexpensive to harm Jews?

Idk but I can’t help but wonder would AAUP members modify views if some of their own friends or wives or sons or granddaughters were kidnapped or raped or murdered on livestream?

    JohnSmith100 in reply to Herve Montague. | August 17, 2024 at 5:23 am

    Universities are cutting their own throats, just like Germany did when they murdered the best and brightest.

    Grandpa war bucks will will universities. I have a grandson whom I am personally tutoring electrical engineering. There really is no reason to send our youth to a university. They can be educated with the universities.

Herve Montague | August 16, 2024 at 8:47 am

“The Lord helps those who help themselves.”

Herve Montague | August 16, 2024 at 8:48 am

“If I’m not for myself, who will be for me?”

JackinSilverSpring | August 16, 2024 at 9:42 am

Maybe there is a silver lining in this. If higher ed self-destructs because of this, that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

    JohnSmith100 in reply to JackinSilverSpring. | August 17, 2024 at 5:29 am

    I agree, I educated myself in many engineering disciplines, once you do one, others are easy. With the resources we have today, most people should be able to do so. When I was doing this I spent a huge amount of time in libraries, now we have Internet.

      Plumber John in reply to JohnSmith100. | August 18, 2024 at 3:12 am

      This is sooo accurate spot on true.

      I am not a plumber, but I accompanied a young plumber for several days. His employer was very experienced.

      The young guy and the older guy were constantly in touch via VIDEO CALL. Showing the older guy the problem. Sometimes he’d just snap a couple quick photos and send them via WhatsApp.

      Sometimes, the younger guy would spend time on YouTube instructional videos—either before or after doing a job. Maybe at lunch. This guy was competent, and conscientious. He was doing a lot, making good money, and he was learning a lot. Maybe 24 years old. He’d gotten a B.A., said it was worthless. In a few years he’ll have his own business , well respected.

      Imho this is the future. Not schooling as it’s been done traditionally.

      (When I was a child, I knew a guy who stated, quite matter-of-factly , that calculators would never replace the slide rule — because calculators were too slow. And they required batteries. Not making this up.)