For nearly 20 years, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) opposed academic boycotts as an assault on the free exchange of ideas.
But now, “in the context of Israel and Gaza,” the AAUP is abandoning its position, Inside Higher Ed reports:
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 That statement has now been replaced by one saying boycotts ‘can be considered legitimate tactical responses to conditions that are fundamentally incompatible with the mission of higher education.’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.
It’s also been some time in the making. We’ve covered the group’s increasing radicalism and anti-Israel hostility here:
And in February, the AAUP joined with a group of American labor unions calling for an “immediate ceasefire and end to the siege of Gaza.”
“The AAUP is both a union and a national faculty group that establishes widely adopted policies defining and safeguarding academic freedom and tenure,” Inside Higher Ed explains.
But those policies are increasingly at odds with academic freedom:
The mental gymnastics used to justify chucking the old policy were described by the AAUP Committee chair on Academic Freedom and Tenure, Rana Jaleel.
Under the new policy, “academic boycotts are not in themselves violations of academic freedom.” Done the right way, they can actually be a good thing, she explains:
The old policy had ‘been reportedly used to squelch academic freedom,’ said Rana Jaleel, chair of Committee A. Now, ‘what we’re saying is that we trust our members—our faculty on the ground who are doing the organizing work—to assess, weigh and decide whether or not they want to participate in academic boycotts,’ she said.The AAUP’s new statement still says boycotts shouldn’t ‘involve any political or religious litmus tests nor target individual scholars and teachers engaged in ordinary academic practices,’ such as conference presentations. It says such ‘boycotts should target only institutions of higher education that themselves violate academic freedom or the fundamental rights upon which academic freedom depends.”Freedom to produce and exchange knowledge depends upon the guarantee of other basic freedoms,’ the document says—including, among others, the freedom to live, the freedom from arbitrary arrest and the freedom of movement.
The AAUP “hasn’t gone as far as specifically endorsing an academic boycott of Israeli universities or the broader boycott, divestment and sanctions movement,” the article points out. But it might just be a matter of time.
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