Most rational people, I believe, are opposed to academic boycotts: those political movements that try to prohibit the exchange of scholars or academic information with countries deemed unacceptable on ideological grounds. These boycotts not only stem the free flow of information among countries that is the lifeblood of academia—especially of science—but also punish those who can contribute to this knowledge even though those people rarely have any influence with their government. Indeed, as in the case of Israel (surely the reason for the dropping of the boycott prohibition), many scholars are opposed to the government’s policies.
Inside Higher Ed (click below to read) reports on the ending of boycotts by the influential organization the American Association of University Professors, an organization that should know better. Click to read:
The report:
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 That statement has now been replaced by one saying boycotts “can be considered legitimate tactical responses to conditions that are fundamentally incompatible with the mission of higher education.”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.
The new position says that “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.”
Note that the AAUP never prevented individual professors from deciding not to cooperate with faculty from other countries. Rather, they used to aver that systematic academic boycotts were not approved by the organization. Now that’s all changed: systematic boycotts are okay. But o its credit, the University of Chicago, under the late President Bob Zimmer, opposed academic boycotts in a 2013 statement, and our opposition remains intact:
“The University of Chicago has from its founding held as its highest value the free and open pursuit of inquiry. Faculty and students must be free to pursue their research and education around the world and to form collaborations both inside and outside of the academy, encouraging engagement with the widest spectrum of views. For this reason, we oppose boycotts of academic institutions or scholars in any region of the world, and oppose recent actions by academic societies to boycott Israeli institutions.”
That’s the way a gutsy university handles such matters. Sadly, the AAUP punted (read its statement at the link). The AAUP’s statement was also heartily approved by a group participating in the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement, an antisemitic initiative whose goal is to eliminate Israel as a Jewish state. Click to read:
An excerpt:
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) commends the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) for dropping its biased, unethical policy opposing academic boycotts, which was primarily aimed at shielding Israeli universities from accountability for their egregious human rights violations.
PACBI salutes all those who worked tirelessly to push the AAUP to change its position, as well as the conscientious academics, students, and progressive academic associations that have for years advocated for ending US academic institutional complicity with Israel’s 76-year-old regime of settler-colonialism and apartheid and, in the process, challenging AAUP’s hypocrisy. Without their persistent protests and intellectual challenges, without the student-led encampments reenergizing campus campaigns for academic boycott and divestment in response to Israel’s Gaza genocide, the AAUP would not have reversed its ethically and logically untenable policy.
. . . Scrapping its unethical policy, which was, arguably by design, used to suppress academic freedom of many calling for BDS against Israel, the new AAUP position recognizes the obvious. It finally accepts that academic boycotts targeting institutions deeply implicated in grave human rights violations can be legitimate “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.”
The PCBI’s only beef is that the AAUP didn’t go far enough and denounce Israel specifically:
. . . AAUP’s failure to now endorse the Palestinian call to boycott complicit Israeli universities, which it finally recognizes as legitimate, even as Israel’s violence culminates in the world’s first livestreamed genocide, which has included scholasticide, domicide and engineered famine, is a profound ethical failure to make amends for the harm the AAUP’s racist policy has done to Palestinians and to our struggle for emancipation from colonial subjugation.
It’s clear from all this, as Inside Higher Ed notes, that the AAUP’s change of policy was to legitimize academic boycotts of Israel. The coincidence of timing is too strong to imply otherwise.
Quis boycottiet ipsos boycottes?
[apologies, couldn’t resist ]
Anna had a similar article and warning on her substack monday at url https://voicesagainstantisemitism.substack.com/
The termites continue to feast on once venerable institutions.
yes, the termites! Cannot think of a better name.
This is bad news for academic freedom and the legitimacy/authority of the AAUP.
Obviously, and cynically, this change of policy has a singular purpose.
According to a spate of recent articles, the American public is losing faith in higher ed. The AAUP just pounded another nail in the enterprise’s coffin. When hate and identity trump curiosity, it’s time to turn the page on the educational establishment and seek another approach to both unbiased research and the education of the young.
Actually, the enterprise could be reformed but the cure might well be considered outrageous by higher ed. Retreat, quickly and with grace, retreat. Return to an enterprise that values curiosity and the scientific method over the social justice concerns of the moment. Return to an enterprise that rises above political causes and teaches, in part by example, how to respectfully discuss thorny issues with people who hold diverse points of view. Return to an enterprise that stays the bleep out of politics and boutique causes. Bring down the cost of tuition by using a formula that shields undergraduates from charges for administrative or research efforts that don’t directly support the college experience for almost all students. As I said, retreat … to a time when the enterprise was the envy of much of the world.
Today’s Chronicle for Higher Education has a good opinion piece on the matter by Cary Nelson, who was AAUP president from 2006 to 2012. He has a new book called Hate Speech and Academic Freedom: The Antisemitic Assault on Basic Principles (Academic Studies Press, 2024), which I haven’t read.
I don’t know if many readers have access to the CHE, but here’s an excerpt from the piece:
[AAUP’s new policy statement contains] “AAUP’s undocumented assault on how its opposition to academic boycotts has purportedly been misused for nearly 20 years. It has, paradoxically, so the AAUP contends, been used “to compromise academic freedom.” Its categorical stance “disregards nuance and is inattentive to context.” These unsupported disparaging generalizations are delivered in the face of a nuanced movement dedicated to the Manichean notion that Palestinians are but a force for good and Israelis a force for evil.
“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.”
I have a somewhat vague memory of being one of only four or five local AAUP members when I was a Teaching Professor at the Colorado School of Mines. I am beginning to regret it. That said, I will await a widespread call to boycott the universities of, say, Myanmar over their treatment of the Rohingya. Until then, I will assume that the AAUP’s relaxing its standards, presumably in order to permit boycotting Israeli universities, is at least borderline anti-Semitic.
Who exactly do they purport to be protecting? This is a genuine question.
It’s all part of the long term plan to dismantle Israel.
Israeli research has provided a number of scientific breakthroughs in several areas that have benefitted people across the globe. What have Palestinian researchers, working in Gaza or the West Bank provided? I would suggest that any professor who participates in this boycott and receives federal funding should have the funding withdrawn. Perhaps, whatever school s/he works at should similarly be penalized? I certainly do not want my taxes supporting anti-semitic activities, just as I do not want them supporting private christian schools.
AAUP has completely lost its way:
https://voicesagainstantisemitism.substack.com/p/aaup-disgraces-itself-by-ending-opposition
They should change their name to AAWP — American Association of Woke Professors.
Boycott them right back!
There’s a good opportunity right now for public universities (and not just flagship public unis) to expand their reach & build up some deserved clout & prestige while boosting their programs. The public writ large & an awful lor of private individuals and companies don”5 want to have anything to do with newly minted graduates who matriculated from $80k dollar a year asshole factories. This includes the Ivy League but is not limited to it.
Maybe it’s time for everyone to write off the Ivies and encourage Israeli academics and companies to look for more collaborations with faculty & students at state schools.