AAUP criticized for reversing academic boycotts

On Monday, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) announced that it had abandoned its long-held, categorical opposition to academic boycotts. Critics of the change have since accused the AAUP of abandoning its commitment to academic freedom. Some have claimed the organization is becoming anti-Zionist, citing the group's call for a ceasefire in Israel and Palestine in February.

In 2005, the AAUP – which writes widely accepted guidelines defining and protecting academic freedom – opposed a planned academic boycott of two Israeli universities. In such boycotts, academics and academic groups refuse to cooperate with or associate with the universities in question.

For the next two decades, the AAUP remained opposed to academic boycotts of universities in any country. That has now changed following a unanimous vote by AAUP's Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure and National Council.

The AAUP's new policy states, “When faculty members choose to support academic boycotts, they may legitimately seek to protect and promote academic freedom and the fundamental rights of colleagues and students” whose rights are being violated. It goes on to say, “In such contexts, academic boycotts are not in themselves violations of academic freedom; rather, they can be viewed as a legitimate tactical response to conditions that are fundamentally incompatible with the mission of higher education.”

After Inside Higher Ed After the statement was first reported on Monday, another major academic freedom advocacy group announced that it continues to oppose such boycotts. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a free speech group with a historical focus on campus, often takes the same positions as the AAUP in defending scholars. But on Wednesday it released a statement titled “FIRE's position on academic boycotts has not changed.”

The statement said FIRE continues to defend the right of individual students and faculty members to conduct or criticize boycotts, but rejects them “as a threat to academic freedom.”

Alex Morey, vice president of campus advocacy at FIRE, said it was incredibly disheartening, to say the least, that the AAUP would “issue a statement like this that opens a mile-wide loophole in academic freedom, and so we hope they retract it.”

Morey said that when academic boycotts are mandated or “systematic,” they have “really terrible effects on academic freedom.” She said she has seen students unable to get a letter of recommendation to study abroad in Israel, and she questioned how free an associate professor would feel if he wanted to work with a scholar in a country his department head is boycotting.

“The word freedom in academic freedom does a lot of work,” Morey said. It means, she said, that scientists should be free from “exactly these kinds of constraints.”

The AAUP's new statement does say that “faculty and students should not face institutional or government censorship or disciplinary action for participating in academic boycotts, refusing to participate in them, or criticizing and debating the decisions of others.” Boycotts, it says, “should only be directed against institutions of higher education that themselves violate academic freedom or the fundamental rights upon which academic freedom depends.” However, Morey said the statement leaves the question of when boycotts are appropriate “completely open.”

Keith Whittington, the founding president of another group, the Academic Freedom Alliance, posted on X the day the AAUP's new stance was released. He said the AAUP had changed. “The AAUP's transformation continues,” Whittington wrote. “This particular shift seemed inevitable, given how activist-driven academia is.”

Whittington, who recently left Princeton University to become David Boies Professor of Law at Yale University, said Inside Higher Ed On Thursday, it said that “it is challenging for a mass-membership organization like the AAUP to focus on its central mission, given the interests of a large number of members and the particular causes they may be passionate about.”

Like the ACLU and other civil rights groups, Whittington said, AAUP members are politically engaged. “The academic world leans very strongly to the left, so many professors naturally bring left-wing political interests into their organizations,” he said. And at this historical moment, there is a real interest among politically active academics in participating in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, Whittington said, creating tensions between that movement and commitment to academic freedom.

“Something has to change,” Whittington said, and “to resolve the tensions, in this case, the AAUP's long-standing commitments to boycotts had to be dissolved.” He said the Academic Freedom Alliance had “not taken an explicit position on boycotts” and acknowledged that some boycotts may be more justified than others, but he was “quite skeptical” that they were consistent with academic freedom concerns.

One thing that has undeniably changed at the AAUP is the increasing role of unions within the organization. In 2022, it joined the large and well-funded American Federation of Teachers (AFT). Many of the AAUP's campus chapters are now union chapters. And the AAUP's new president, Todd Wolfson, uses language associated with labor struggles.

Wolfson said Inside Higher Ed On Thursday, he wanted to make the AAUP a “militant organization.” Last week, he called Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance a “fascist” in a statement.

Regarding criticism of academic boycotts as violations of academic freedom, Wolfson said, “Collective actions of all kinds do not necessarily interfere with academic freedom and undermine it.” He compared academic boycotts to the 2023 strike he led as an adjunct professor and local AAUP-AFT union leader at Rutgers University. “We called on all union members to join us, close their labs, stop their research, stop attending conferences, stop grading papers,” Wolfson said. “Is that even more of a violation of academic freedom?”

“A strike is directed against an institution and calls on faculty members not to do research, not to teach and not to serve,” Wolfson said. “I would like to know the difference.”

Beyond the concerns raised by academic freedom advocates about AAUP's shift, criticism came from social media, conservative media, pro-Israel groups and a former AAUP president who has long criticized what he sees as the group's “anti-Zionist” shift.

Farewell to the “gold standard”?

Miriam Elman, executive director of the Academic Engagement Network, a pro-Israel organization for faculty and administrators, lamented the AAUP's change of course. Elman said her group had repeatedly invoked the old policy, including in messages to university administrators when pro-Palestinian protesters called for an academic boycott. “What do we do now?” she asked.

“The AAUP will no longer be able to call itself the arbiter of academic guild rules,” Elman said. She said its call for an immediate ceasefire in Israel and Palestine was “already a sign.” But she believes the new boycott stance is the “nail in the coffin” and a final step in the “hijacking of a once venerable association.”

Cary Nelson, professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and president of the AAUP from 2006 to 2012, launched a petition against the AAUP policy change on Thursday along with professors from two other universities. He said it was an international petition because “for better or worse,” outside the United States, AAUP's policies and definitions are respected.

After leaving the presidency, Nelson served for three years on AAUP's Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, but was not re-elected. By that point, in 2015, “Committee A had changed a lot… since then I've observed a gradual shift toward anti-Zionism,” Nelson said.

Committee A wrote the original statement against academic boycotts nearly 20 years ago and has now unanimously passed a statement that refutes it in many ways. Despite the changes he has seen on the committee, Nelson said the turnaround is still “shocking” to him. “Even though I could see the momentum, I thought they would never do it,” he said.

“Part of it is a simple question of priorities: What is more important, the unchallenged principle of opposing boycotts or the delicious possibility that the AAUP supports your political agenda and advocates a boycott of the State of Israel?” Nelson asked. “Nobody on Committee A is putting principle first right now,” he said.

Nelson wrote in The Chronicle of Higher Education this week that “we can no longer use AAUP policies as the gold standard for academic freedom.”

But what organization does Nelson think could take the AAUP's place in the future? “God only knows,” Nelson said. “Actually, there's nothing.” He said he gets emails about the formation of a new AAUP, “and I don't answer those emails.”