https://www.city-journal.org/article/american-association-of-university-professors-academic-boycotts
As students, professors, and administrators get ready to return to campus for what events both in the United States and abroad suggest will be another tumultuous year, the American Association of University Professors has decided to add fuel to the fire by announcing that it no longer categorically opposes academic boycotts. The decision by the once-august and respected organization is not surprising. After all, the AAUP is now led by a professor of journalism and media studies who a week ago used his official platform to call J. D. Vance “a fascist” and to claim that America’s colleges and universities are not in fact “ideological indoctrination centers.”
The AAUP was founded in 1915, in large part to “define fundamental professional values and standards for higher education.” In December of that year, in the first volume of its Bulletin, the AAUP promulgated a “Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure,” which Keith E. Whittington in his outstanding new book You Can’t Teach That!: The Battle over University Classrooms describes as “provid[ing] the philosophical basis for a more robust understanding of academic freedom in the United States.” Twenty-five years later, the AAUP issued what remains to this day—after a few “interpretive” footnotes added in 1970—the most influential brief document on the subject: the “1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure,” which, to quote Whittington, “stripped away the philosophical discussion that dominated the 1915 Declaration and honed in on a small number of key commitments that universities should make to their faculties.”
In late April 2005, the British Association of University Teachers voted to boycott two institutions of higher education in Israel, Bar-Ilan and Haifa Universities, a move that would bar all Israeli scholars who did not denounce “their state’s colonial and racist policies” from participating in conferences or engaging in joint research with British colleagues. Scholars around the world were outraged—even Jon Wiener, writing in The Nation, called it “a mistake”—and within just days, the AAUP’s “Committee A,” charged with watching out for academic freedom and tenure, released a strong statement, “The AAUP Opposes Academic Boycotts,” that warned of the “damage [to] academic freedom.” By the end of May, the AUT had reversed its position, and the following year, the AAUP published a piece titled “On Academic Boycotts” that states clearly, “In view of the Association’s long-standing commitment to the free exchange of ideas, we oppose academic boycotts” and “On the same grounds, we recommend that other academic organizations oppose academic boycotts.” The lead author of the piece was Joan Wallach Scott.
