AAUP Opposes Anti-BDS Legislation [UPDATED]

[Moving to the front to include the AAUP's  explanation of its opposition to academic boycotts]

The AAUP's Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure has issued an admirable statement opposing the anti-BDS legislation that has been enacted in over 20 states.  May of the statutes require all contractors, including those with universities, to certify that they do not participate in boycotts of Israel or "Israeli controlled territories." In at least one instance, such a pledge was required of a guest lecturer at the University of Houston.  A University of Texas administrator has since told Inside Higher Ed that outside speakers will not be required to sign the pledge, and Houston has evidently changed its practice, but there is no guarantee that legislatures will not require in the future. Here is the gist of the AAUP statement:

The American Association of University Professors does not endorse BDS. We take no position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict nor on calls for divestment or economic sanctions. But we oppose all academic boycotts, including an academic boycott of Israel, on the grounds that such boycotts violate the principles of academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas for which our organization has stood for over one- hundred years. We believe that academic freedom ought not to be subordinated to political exigency; there will always be compelling political causes that will challenge the ideal of free and open scholarly exchange.

It is precisely for this reason that our opposition to BDS is matched as resolutely by our opposition to these pledges, which are nothing short of an attempt to limit freedom of speech and belief. Indeed, they conjure the specter of loyalty and disclaimer oaths, mainstays of McCarthyism. The right of individuals to engage in political boycotts, and to come together collectively to support a boycott, has a long and storied history in American civil protests. At colleges and universities especially, where reasoned disagreement and debate should be the order of the day, demands that faculty and students forswear support for a peaceful protest are repugnant.

I think the AAUP, of which I am a member, has gotten it exactly right. Academic boycotts are antithetical to the principle of free inquiry, no matter who is boycotting whom.

UPDATE:  An excerpt from the AAUP's 2013 explanation of its opposition to academic boycotts is after the jump, as is the explanatory oped of Henry Reichman, chair of the AAUP's Committee A on Academic Freedom, included with permission from Inside Higher Ed.

AAUP STATEMENT ON ACADEMIC BOYCOTTS

The American Association of University Professors, as an organization, neither supports nor opposes Israeli government or Palestinian policies, although many of our members certainly have strong beliefs on one side or the other.  However, the AAUP does stand in opposition to academic boycotts as a matter of principle.  Our position was fully enunciated in the 2005 report of Committee A, "On Academic Boycotts."  This report established the following principles:

1. In view of the Association’s long-standing commitment to the free exchange of ideas, we oppose academic boycotts.
2. On the same grounds, we recommend that other academic associations oppose academic boycotts. We urge that they seek alternative means, less inimical to the principle of academic freedom, to pursue their concerns.
3. We especially oppose selective academic boycotts that entail an ideological litmus test. We understand that such selective boycotts may be intended to preserve academic exchange with those more open to the views of boycott proponents, but we cannot endorse the use of political or religious views as a test of eligibility for participation in the academic community.
4. The Association recognizes the right of individual faculty members or groups of academics not to cooperate with other individual faculty members or academic institutions with whom or with which they disagree. We believe, however, that when such noncooperation takes the form of a systematic academic boycott, it threatens the principles of free expression and communication on which we collectively depend.
5. Consistent with our long-standing principles and practice, we consider other forms of protest, such as the adoption of resolutions of condemnation by higher education groups intended to publicize documented threats to or violations of academic freedom at offending institutions, to be entirely appropriate.
6. Recognizing the existence of shared concerns, higher education groups should collaborate as fully as possible with each other to advance the interests of the entire academic community in addressing academic freedom issues. Such collaboration might include joint statements to bring to the attention of the academic community and the public at large grave threats to academic freedom.
7. The Association recognizes the right of faculty members to conduct economic strikes and to urge others to support their cause. We believe, however, that in each instance those engaged in a strike at an academic institution should seek to minimize the impact of the strike on academic freedom.
8. We understand that threats to or infringements of academic freedom may occasionally seem so dire as to require compromising basic precepts of academic freedom, but we resist the argument that extraordinary circumstances should be the basis for limiting our fundamental commitment to the free exchange of ideas and their free expression.

 

Why the AAUP Opposes Both Boycotts and Restrictions on Their Supporters

By Henry Reichman

August 8, 2018

Today the American Association of University Professors released a statement from its Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, which I chair, decrying state laws passed that impose punitive measures against supporters of boycott, divestment and sanctions, or BDS, with regard to Israel. Such legislation has reportedly led some public universities to require external speakers invited to campus and other people who contract with those institutions, including external reviewers of tenure and promotion materials, to sign pledges that they do not now, nor will they in the future, endorse BDS. Such pledges, the Committee A statement says, must be condemned as "nothing short of an attempt to limit freedom of speech and belief."

The AAUP is also today releasing a letter sent to Israeli authorities by me on behalf of Committee A urging reversal of Israel's decision to deny entry to Columbia Law School professor Katherine Franke, on grounds that she supports the BDS movement, as a threat to "academic freedom and global scholarly cooperation and exchange." It is all the more troubling that Franke apparently was barred on the basis of information provided by American anti-BDS blacklisting sites. How is it, she asked, that “Israel delegates to right-wing trolls the job of determining who should be admitted to Israel?”

Since 2005, the AAUP has opposed academic boycotts, including the academic boycott of Israel, and has on multiple occasions urged other scholars and scholarly organizations to join that opposition. Where appropriate, the association will continue to do so. As today's statement notes, academic boycotts "violate the principles of academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas for which our organization has stood for over 100 years."

With respect to divestment and strictly economic sanctions or boycotts, however, we remain neutral. And we take no position whatsoever on the underlying conflict, other than to bemoan its seeming intractability.

Some have argued that academic boycotts are an effective and necessary response to grave violations of academic freedom, such as those imposed by Israel on Palestinian institutions of higher education. Responding to such arguments nearly five years ago, I wrote the following on this site: "The whole idea of boycotting academic institutions in order to defend academic freedom is utterly wrongheaded. Violations of academic freedom can be found anywhere. In the AAUP, we encounter such violations, petty and large, on a daily basis in the United States. In the very worst of these cases, when all efforts to correct the situation fail, we place administrations on our censure list. But that list is not a boycott list. We do not and will not ask our colleagues to boycott institutions that violate academic freedom or that support policies we abhor. Instead we call on people to organize and struggle to effect change in such institutions, both from inside and out. If we resist the temptation to boycott offending institutions in our own country, where we have full opportunity to determine all the relevant facts, how then can we agree to support such boycotts of foreign institutions?"

That said, the AAUP has also consistently opposed efforts to silence or discipline advocates of such boycotts. We cannot help but recognize that supporters of BDS have repeatedly had their rights violated. The right of individuals to engage in or advocate boycotts is well established in the United States; any attempt to limit that right is clearly unconstitutional under the 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision in NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co. No one is obligated to support a boycott, but opposition to a boycott does not justify silencing its advocates. Just as the AAUP defends the right of faculty members to make extramural comments that most of us may find repulsive, so too do we defend the right of faculty members to support policies we may oppose, including policies that may threaten academic freedom.

This position has frequently led advocates on both sides of the BDS dispute to condemn our stance as "confused" at best. So, for instance, soon after I reported to the AAUP's annual meeting in June that today's statement and letter were in preparation, one pro-Israel group denounced our position as "contradictory" and "confusing." Previously, advocates of BDS had also lambasted the AAUP for its lack of "coherence" and "consistency." That they did so in an issue of the AAUP's own Journal of Academic Freedom, much of which was devoted to articles calling on us to abandon our opposition to academic boycotts and advocating such a boycott of Israel, only points to our commitment to providing an open forum for debate and discussion.

But nothing is confusing or inconsistent about taking a stance in opposition to some viewpoint while simultaneously defending the right of others to advocate that viewpoint. Both the American Civil Liberties Union and the AAUP do this all the time. As the old adage, widely misattributed to Voltaire but in fact written in a book about him, puts it, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

Four years ago I predicted that "efforts to promote the academic boycott of Israel will continue and perhaps even intensify, but at the same time, I also think that attempts to restrict the academic freedom of pro-boycott advocates and other advocates of the Palestinian side, whether they advocate a boycott or not, will also increase. I’m not happy about either development." Sadly, elements on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict too often invoke the protections of academic freedom when it benefits them and violate these when it doesn't. But, as I've previously argued, "the two sides are not in equivalent positions. Although support for the Palestinian cause is greater on American campuses than in society in general, those who control the universities -- administrators and trustees as well as powerful donors -- are most likely to support the Israeli cause."

If the academic boycott of Israel has threatened the free exchange of scholarship, the recent response of the Israeli government has only made matters worse. A 2017 law barring foreign advocates of BDS from entering the country, which was applied to Professor Franke, threatens nothing less than an academic counterboycott, as inimical or more to academic freedom as anything advocated by the BDS movement itself.

“This is introducing a political litmus test for anyone entering Israel,” Laurie Brand, chair of the Middle East Studies Association’s Committee on Academic Freedom and a professor of Middle East studies at the University of Southern California, told Inside Higher Ed. “If people have expressed support for a boycott, that would lead to a denial of a visa or residence. We’re concerned about this as a violation of free speech, freedom of conscience and specifically academic freedom.” Former AAUP president Cary Nelson, a prominent supporter of Israel and opponent of academic boycotts, called the law "a serious mistake."

And now comes word of newly imposed entry and residency restrictions on foreign scholars employed at Palestinian universities. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education, out of 64 foreign nationals employed by eight Palestinian universities, at least 32 faculty and staff members experienced difficulty entering or remaining in the occupied territories over the past two academic years (2016-17 and 2017-18). The majority were U.S. and European Union citizens.

On June 8, seven international faculty members at Birzeit University -- one-third of the institution's international staff -- were refused visa extensions by Israeli authorities. In July, Israeli authorities shut down a Palestinian college in Jerusalem, banned the holding of an academic conference and detained 15 individuals. Such efforts threaten to isolate the Palestinian academic community and deprive American and other international scholars of access to colleagues and students -- ironically much like, and arguably more effectively than, the academic boycott of Israel.

It is not my role nor that of the AAUP to pass judgment on Israel's security measures nor on the merits or demerits of the two sides in this historic conflict. But efforts by American colleges and universities to compel BDS supporters to disavow their views "conjure the specter of loyalty and disclaimer oaths, mainstays of McCarthyism," as today's statement puts it. And the Israeli government's efforts to bar scholars like Professor Franke are no less a violation of the free academic exchange essential to the growth of international scholarship and understanding than the academic boycott to which they are a misguided response.

Disclosure: Reichman, an emeritus professor of history at California State University East Bay, was my housemate in Berkeley for one year in the early 1970s.

Note: This post has been slightly edited to clarify the stances of public universities in Texas.

Comments

[Russell]

Is it not disingenuous to state "We take no position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict nor on calls for divestment or economic sanctions" when the position explicitly rejects BDS? Isn't the AAUP saying that they pass no judgement on whether a consumer decides not to buy a product made in an illegal settlement, or when a rock star decides not to play in Tel Aviv, but that they do pass judgement when a university professor or academic group decides they don't wish to be involved with Israeli academic institutions.
I see there is a clash of principles. Academic Freedom is certainly a principle to be respected but it is not an absolute. The harm done to academic freedom seems less significant than the harm done by avoiding the moral responsibility of academics to do all they can to respect the principle of defending human rights. The AAUP has sided with Israel. Shame on them.

[Steve DIamond]

I don't think its accurate or fair to suggest that opposition to BDS is "siding with Israel."

It is taking a position in support of a form of political behavior that advocates the presence of a wide range of views inside academia. It means that academic exchange is one means of supporting basic civil liberties inside Israel for Arabs, Christians, Jews and secular residents alike.

Despite the persistent oppression of Palestine, its citizens and Arabs inside Israel (sadly a longtime dimension of some winges of the Zionist movement) there remains space there to engage in debate and democratic politics. It is resolutely not South Africa under apartheid, a canard that the Stalinist movement developed many years ago as part of its campaign to win support for Soviet backed foreign policy in Africa and the middle east and now, sadly, adopted widely on the "left," including most visibly today, inside the British Labour Party.

Academic freedom can amplify that space inside Israel.

I am a career long member, supporter, and sometime officer of the AAUP. Although I had no role in the preparation of the statement I think it makes an important contribution to the battle for civil liberties.