The AAUP Threatens Academic Freedom by Changing Its Tune on Boycotts

A recent policy decision by the American Association of University Professors to drop its categorical opposition to academic boycotts has raised new challenges to academic freedom on campuses worldwide.

Originally put forward in a widely noted 2005 position paper, that policy relied on the entirely reasonable premise that boycotts in which scholars and academic groups refuse to interact with specific institutions and countries curtail “the freedom of teachers and researchers to engage in work with academic colleagues” and “strike directly at the free exchange of ideas.”

In sharp contrast, their revised statement asserts that boycotts “can be considered legitimate tactical responses to conditions that are fundamentally incompatible with the mission of higher education.”

Given this dramatic backtracking, we might have expected the AAUP to clearly articulate the justification for the change, and how it would apply to specific real-world cases roiling universities today. That wasn’t the case.

This revised policy occurs at a moment when — as in 2005, toward the end of the Second Intifada — the primary targets of academic boycotts are Israeli institutions of higher learning. In the rollout of its new policy, this critical context wasn’t even mentioned by the AAUP, calling into question the sincerity of its stated reasons.

The AAUP is a national faculty group with offices in D.C. and many local university chapters composed of faculty who choose to affiliate, including, as of recently, at Harvard.

Formed in 1915, and now an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO, its stated mission is to support academic freedom and promote shared faculty governance. As such, its new policy on academic boycotts looms large in the broader discourse about academic freedom. (Thankfully, a number of new groups, including the Academic Freedom Alliance, Heterodox Academy, and the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard, now offer an alternative perspective on matters of academic freedom.)

The current AAUP statement on academic boycotts states that its underlying purpose is to support and defend the “freedom to produce and exchange knowledge,” and it correctly asserts that these freedoms depend on other freedoms, such as rights to life, liberty, and freedom of thought, expression, religion, and association. They also point out the quite obvious fact that “not all of our academic colleagues and students in the United States and around the world are afforded these fundamental rights.” Yet there is still no explanation as to how this unfortunate reality should influence discussions about academic boycotts.

If the drafters of the new AAUP policy are indeed aware that academics in many countries lack the fundamental freedoms essential to the effective pursuit of knowledge, do they support boycotts of institutions in those countries? If they do not support such boycotts, why not? Such questions cannot be ignored, especially as an actual movement for boycott, divestment, and sanctions — colloquially, BDS — uniquely targets a single country: Israel. While the faults of the Israeli government can and should be debated, it cannot be seriously argued that Israel uniquely lacks the freedoms the AAUP claims to hold as foundational to institutions of higher education.

Thankfully, its new policy doesn’t argue for boycotts of Israeli institutions of higher learning, nor does it support targeting individual scholars engaged in academic work. To do either would signal explicit disdain for academic freedom. But as the AAUP expresses openness to boycotts, it must be noted that prior boycott efforts have indeed involved such targeting.

In considering how campus communities might discuss a “tactical response” to potentially justified academic boycotts, the AAUP appropriately affirms the right of individual faculty and students alike to make their own evaluation of calls for systematic academic boycotts. Such freedoms are indeed essential, and faculty who express these views should certainly not face reprisals for them.

These welcome aspects of the new policy notwithstanding, the AAUP cannot continue to ignore the elephant in the room. Just as the 2005 AAUP policy was stimulated by ongoing efforts to boycott Israel, its revised policy has been released in conjunction with intense calls for divestment as well as boycotts of Israeli institutions on numerous university campuses. The timing of the new policy seems clearly to indicate some support by its drafters for such demands likely to arise in the upcoming fall semester.

I am certainly not alone in thinking this. In its coverage of the AAUP policy change, the Middle East Monitor boasted “Major U.S. academic group approves boycott of Israel in a historic U-turn,” an interpretation that may well find its way into chants of pro-Palestinian campus protestors in the coming weeks.

We need serious scholarly inquiries into the relationship between academic boycotts of various kinds and the principles of academic freedom to enhance the quality of discussions on campuses worldwide. Sadly, the recent policy revision by the AAUP fails to accomplish this and raises many more questions than it answers.

Rather than addressing a real problem through a balanced and critical inquiry, the new policy reflects a prevalent and superficial strain of academic political activism that will only intensify the problem.

From an organization named the American Association of University Professors, we deserve better.

Jeffrey S. Flier is the Higginson Professor of Physiology and Medicine and a co-president of the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard.