The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) claims to promote academic freedom and shared governance. The AAUP represents itself as a group that defines fundamental professional values and standards for higher education and strives to ensure higher education’s contribution to the common good. In 2005, AAUP spoke out against calls from faculty to cancel and boycott scholars from Israeli institutions, saying that such actions “strike directly at the free exchange of ideas.” Fast-forward nearly twenty years, and the AAUP flipped its position to where boycotts “can be considered legitimate tactical responses to conditions that are fundamentally incompatible with the mission of higher education” and this change was made, according to Inside Higher Education, “in the context of Israel and Gaza.”
To the AAUP, boycotts are now acceptable when they “legitimately seek to protect and advance the academic freedom and fundamental rights of colleagues and students who are living and working under circumstances that violate that freedom and one or more of those rights.”
While there is some ambiguity in the text of the AAUP policy change, advocating for academic boycotts in any real form is at odds with the promotion of the common good. This new policy is a way for the AAUP—a group run by progressive activist faculty—to legitimize its anti-Israel bias and provides faculty with cover to engage in more overt political position taking. This change in tone and direction should not surprise anyone, and the AAUP’s new policy continues to feed into the public’s declining trust in higher education. The AAUP’s position is exactly the opposite of what our nation and higher education needs right now as we head into the heated 2024 Presidential election.
A recent Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) survey on faculty attitudes toward free speech and expression highlights this new political environment on college campuses. While the data reveal that professors are notably more tolerant than the students they teach on the open expression of ideas, many faculty are not open to viewpoint diversity or the free flow of ideas.
When presented with the statement “a university professor should be free to express any of their ideas or convictions on any subject,” there were notable differences by discipline. The data show that while about two-thirds of faculty in STEM (66 percent), business (66 percent), and the arts/humanities (65 percent) support this position, support was notably lower among faculty in the social sciences (55 percent) and faculty in education (45 percent). A similar pattern emerged when faculty were queried about the balance between free speech and hate speech. Majorities of STEM and business faculty maintained that speech should only be restricted “where words are certain to incite physical violence” (58 percent and 65 percent, respectively) but support was lower among faculty in the social sciences (48 percent), the arts/humanities (48 percent), and education (42 percent). FIRE has found that, while most faculty approve of academic freedom and are wary of restricting speech, these positions found the greatest support among faculty in STEM and business. This support maps onto the ideological preferences of faculty today where a majority of faculty in the social sciences, the arts/humanities, and education identify as liberal, whereas business and STEM faculty often have larger proportions of conservatives in their departments
Groups like the AAUP and its Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, which spearheaded the policy change, are run by those on the left who see themselves as activists and change-makers. Committee A was chaired by Rana M. Jaleel, an Associate Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at the University of California, Davis. The committee is a an academically unrepresentative group comprised of faculty who come from fields dominated by traditionally left-of-center professors who take scholar-activist views—think English, History, Media Studies, and Africana Studies. The chair, Jaleel, has a history of left-wing activism and organizing and made it clear that she wanted to politicize the AAUP itself. In a position paper seeking a role in the AAUP’s National Council, Jaleel highlighted her various roles in the Occupy Movement and declared that “as a person active in the Occupy movements, I hope to forge connections between the AAUP and the groundswell of activism and organizing.” Of course, the AAUP’s Council agreed with her and adopted this new position.
What Jaleel has done, along with the AAUP at large, has further embarrassed higher education and undermined core values about research, exploration, innovation, and open inquiry. Jaleel is not alone. Far too many in the professorate agree with the positions that Jaleel espouses; they have no problem censoring others, and in doing so, undermining the core goals of higher education. Trustees, Presidents, and the groups that promote open inquiry must denounce this disgusting political position immediately, for higher education’s core value is at real risk.
The post The AAUP is Wrong appeared first on American Enterprise Institute – AEI.