Faculty members and students should be free to assess the specific circumstances for systematic academic boycotts and make their own choices regarding their participation in them, according to the newly released statement on academic boycotts from the American Association of University Professors, shifting from the group’s 2006 stance against them.
AAUP said it long held that academic exchange should be freely conducted “without regard to political or religious viewpoint” but that its position against academic boycotts have been controversial.
The revised policy maintains that academic boycotts are not in themselves violations of academic freedom, according to AAUP, and can instead be legitimate tactical responses to conditions that are” fundamentally incompatible with the mission of higher education.”
“The freedom to produce and exchange knowledge depends upon the guarantee of other basic freedoms and human rights, among them the rights to life, liberty, security of person, freedom from arbitrary arrest or detention, and the rights to liberty of movement and freedom to choose one’s residence,” AAUP said.
AAUP goes on to say faculty and students should not face “institutional or government censorship or discipline” for participating in academic boycotts.
While AAUP does not mention Israel by name, the policy decision comes after increasing calls for the BDS movement since October 7.
Criticism intensifies
Miriam Elman, president of the Academic Engagement Network, a group of faculty across the country who oppose efforts to delegitimize Israel and defend academic freedom on campus, slammed what she called the AAUP’s “shameful” and “misguided” new policy.
Israeli scholars, students and scientists are being shunned, ostracized and ghosted, Elman wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
“The AAUP should’ve raised its voice against this massive uptick in boycotting. Instead it’s giving license to ramp up these harmful practices,” she wrote, adding the organization “got it exactly right” 20 years ago with its 2006 stance against boycotts.
Elman called academic boycotts “antithetical” to its bedrock principles and accused AAUP’s leadership of thinking it could shun universities without harming their students and faculty.
Faculty Against Antisemitism Movement, a group of academics working to stand against antisemitism on campus, said academic boycotts are a core tactic of the BDS movement and contradict the core principles of higher education.
“We won’t stand for it,” FAAM said in a post on X. “The AAUP is wrong, and we’re telling them so.”
In a blog post for conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute, Senior Fellow Sameul Abrams slammed AAUP’s “progressive activist faculty,” calling the policy reversal a way to legitimize the group’s anti-Israel bias.
Abrams also slammed AAUP Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, the group behind instituting the policy, for her history of left-wing activism and organizing.
“Trustees, Presidents, and the groups that promote open inquiry must denounce this disgusting political position immediately,” Abrams wrote, “For higher education’s core value is at real risk.”