Boycotts and academic freedom don't mix, says free speech group

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression warns that academic boycotts are “fundamentally incompatible” with academic freedom.

Robert Shibley, in an article for FIRE, defines academic boycotts as “a tactic in which faculty members declare that they or an organization to which they belong will refrain from collaborating with particular scholars or institutions associated with the target of the boycott until that target changes policies or practices opposed by the boycott's proponents.”

Shibley explained that the problem becomes particularly problematic when institutions impose systematic boycotts that limit the autonomy of individual scientists. He wrote:

FIRE has long supported the rights of individual students and faculty to choose for themselves which scientists and institutions to collaborate with—or avoid. Academia could not function if scientists could not use their own judgment, even though individual scientists do not always act in ways that best serve the interests of open research. The most important academic boycotts arise when individual academic institutions, their subdivisions, or professional associations impose systematic boycotts that their members must abide by or that prevent individual scientists from collaborating with boycotted colleagues. In fact, these systematic boycotts themselves impinge on the individual rights of faculty to choose for themselves which colleagues to collaborate with—or avoid.

The author pointed out that the American Association of University Professors recently took a different view: “Academic boycotts can be viewed as a legitimate tactical response to conditions that are fundamentally incompatible with the mission of higher education.”

Shibley stated that FIRE, on the other hand, will continue to “fight systematic academic boycotts,” noting that the organization's president, Greg Lukianoff, argued nearly a decade ago that academic boycotts and “the principles of academic freedom” could not coexist.

Quoting Lukianoff, Shibley wrote: “Academic freedom 'relies on open communication across all borders in a global system of examining, arguing, researching, collaborating, and competing to produce better ideas.' Preventing scientists from collaborating with colleagues from a particular country 'under the pretext of opposition to that country's government' is incompatible with this open, liberal system.”

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MORE: More than 1,000 scientists sign petition against AAUP for supporting academic boycotts

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