The decision by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) to embrace the BDS movement will be horrible for higher education.
Tammi Rossman-Benjamin writes at the Jewish News Syndicate:
From academic guardians to political operativesTodd Wolfson, the freshly minted president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), wasted no time in issuing his battle cry. Claiming that “fascist” politicians are “within striking distance of the annihilation of American higher education as we know it,” Wolfson urged all those “who care about higher education, academic freedom and the future of democracy” to “prepare for the fight ahead.”Ironically, an AAUP statement released a few days later revealed that the real threat to “higher education, academic freedom and the future of democracy” is Wolfson’s AAUP and its leaders.Reversing its 2005 position acknowledging that academic boycotts, which call for cutting all ties to targeted academic institutions and scholars, are “inimical to academic freedom,” the AAUP’s latest statement on the matter claims that academic boycotts are perfectly compatible with academic freedom. The statement even argues these boycotts “can be considered legitimate tactical responses to conditions that are fundamentally incompatible with higher education.”What gives? Why did the organization that has been setting the professional standards for higher education since 1915 and is widely acknowledged as the protector and defender of academic freedom in the American academy twist itself into pretzel-like contortions, claiming that what it once considered “inimical” to academic freedom is now perfectly acceptable, and can even contribute to protecting academic freedom? In a word: politics.Both the AAUP’s 2005 pronouncement and the just-announced reversal of it were directly responsive to calls from the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), the academic arm of the BDS movement. The AAUP’s flip-flop is a testament to the growing foothold of PACBI in academia, and its success in bringing the antisemitic fight to dismantle the Jewish state not only to college and university campuses, but to academic associations like the Middle East Studies Association, the American Anthropological Association, and yes, the AAUP.
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