Over 1,000 Scholars Sign Petition Opposing AAUP’s Embrace of Academic Boycotts

We talked about this when the news broke last week. It’s an awful development and would be especially bad for Jewish students.

The College Fix reports:

More than 1,000 scholars sign petition against AAUP for supporting academic boycottsAn 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.”The protest comes after the AAUP, a left-leaning faculty union, announced Aug. 9 that it would support academic boycotts despite its previous position, held since 2005, that stated “the search for truth and its free expression suffer if a boycott is in place.”The long-held position also stated such boycotts threaten “the principles of free expression and communication on which we collectively depend.”Chemistry Professor Anna Krylov, University of Southern California’s associate chair in natural sciences, wrote on her Substack that the American Association of University Professors was “once a venerable organization,” but it “has been steadily moving towards a radical agenda, abandoning its noble mission of advancing academic freedom.”She told The College Fix academic boycotts treat individuals “as representative of certain groups rather than free agents responsible for their own deeds.”They “represent an unacceptable intrusion of politics and partisanship into science. Beyond science, academic boycotts are divisive and contribute to increased polarization and intolerance,” Krylov said via email.

Tags: Antisemitism, BDS, College Insurrection, Israel

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