Academic freedom was once the organizing principle of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). In its inaugural 1915 statement, the AAUP declared that universities cannot serve their purpose “without accepting and enforcing to the fullest extent the principle of academic freedom.” In making that declaration, the AAUP affirmed the integrity and progress of the search for knowledge as the defining purpose of academic freedom. The distinctive norms of the scholarly profession flowed directly from that purpose:

“Since there are no rights without corresponding duties, the considerations heretofore set down with respect to the freedom of the academic teacher entail certain correlative obligations. The claim to freedom of teaching is made in the interest of the integrity and of the progress of scientific inquiry; it is, therefore, only those who carry on their work in the temper of the scientific inquirer who may justly assert this claim. (pp. 8-9).”

Historically, the AAUP frequently reiterated its commitment to academic freedom, even in the face of political pressure. For example, when the British Association of University Teachers controversially voted in 2005 to boycott institutes of higher education in Israel, the AAUP resisted. In its 2006 report, in which it declared that academic boycotting impinges on academic freedom as a matter of principle, the AAUP condemned academic boycotts because “the need is always for more academic freedom, not less.”

In its August 2024 “Statement on Academic Boycotts,” however, the AAUP reversed this principled position. Instead, the leaders of the AAUP now insist, academic boycotts can promote academic freedom, since academic freedom depends on other rights and freedoms:

“[T]he rights to life, liberty, security of person, and freedom from arbitrary arrest or detention; the rights to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion; the right to hold opinions without interference; the right to freedom of expression; the right to participate in public affairs; the right to equal protection and effective protection against discrimination; the right to freedom of association; the right to peaceful assembly; the right to work; the right to participate in cultural life; the right to education; and the rights to liberty of movement and freedom to choose one’s residence.”

The AAUP's new position is that academic boycotting is compatible with academic freedom and should not be disciplined or censured by institutions and governments. Specifically, the AAUP now states that individual scholars, acting in their professional capacities, should be free to participate in academic boycotts.

To outsiders, the AAUP's recent statement may seem an abrupt about-face from its previous position. However, the erosion of the AAUP’s commitment to academic freedom began long before the AAUP’s August 2024 report. Decades earlier, the AAUP had grappled with a distinction between academic and economic boycotting, as an instance of the problem of institutional neutrality in general. It did this on two major occasions: In 1970, the AAUP published conflicting commentaries on institutional neutrality in light of the Vietnam War. Next, in 1985, the AAUP approved of economic but not academic boycotting in solidarity against racial apartheid in South Africa. Through this distinction, the AAUP sought to retain its core commitment to academic freedom on one axis, while acknowledging that there could be overlaps between economic and academic boycotting:

“Throughout its history, the AAUP has approved numerous resolutions condemning regimes and institutions that limit the freedoms of citizens and faculty, but South Africa is the only instance in which the organization endorsed some form of boycott. Indeed, the Association has often called for greater freedom of exchange among teachers and researchers at the very time that the U.S. government has imposed restrictions on these exchanges, as occurred with the Soviet Union and is still occurring with Cuba.”

But that was then, and this is now. In response to the AAUP’s August 2024 statement affirming boycotts, many organizations such as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and the Academic Freedom Alliance (AFA) have issued statements voicing their objection. HxA agrees: in the name of open inquiry, we stand firmly against academic boycotts. At HxA we particularly object to the AAUP’s endorsement of boycotts, because we see that endorsement as something close to a rejection of the professional ideal of scholarship itself, an ideal the AAUP not only long defended, but originally helped define. Beyond the boycott issue, the AAUP’s recent statement is an assertion that political activism is more important than the communal human search for knowledge. At HxA, we see things differently.

Everyone has a right to engage in political activism. But when political activism threatens the defining purpose of a profession, that profession must prioritize its raison d’etre over activism. Academic boycotts are pernicious precisely because they bring the urge for political activism and the obligations of the academic profession into direct conflict.

Imagine a surgeon who decides not to use the best hip-replacement device on patients because that line of devices comes from a country whose foreign policy he abhors (a policy, let's imagine, that he believes violates basic rights of humans in other countries). Moreover, he stops prescribing that device to his patients because he wants to support political activists who have called for systematic action against that country (a “medical boycott”).

No credible association of medical professionals would condone such actions by that surgeon. To do so would be to reject the health-providing imperative that defines medicine as a profession. In the field of medicine, a doctor who refuses to provide the best available medical care to his patients because he instead wanted to support some purely political agenda would likely face the loss of his medical license, and would face other forms of legal jeopardy as well.

But what about the case of scholars? Should political science professors be free to exclude from their undergrad syllabi articles and studies produced by scholars from countries whose foreign or domestic policies they personally abhor? Can a member of a faculty search committee in classics, who has a fiduciary obligation to his university to identify and recommend the best candidate for the job, decide to vote and speak against any candidate who is from some country he wishes to see boycotted? Indeed, should a physicist refuse to attend an important conference hosted by a university in a country whose foreign policy he personally abhors, even if findings from the conference are fundamental to the extension of our knowledge in that specialized area?

Obviously, there are differences between the legal dispositions (the “groundings”) of the norms that govern the medical profession and those governing the scholarly one. But the underlying structure of the conflict remains the same. Systematic boycott movements bring the personal rights of political activism and the imperatives of professional conduct into conflict. In the context of professional actions, morally, and sometimes legally, the professional norms trump.

In affirming that professors have a right to engage in academic boycotts, the AAUP has abandoned an ideal that is close to the core of the scholarly profession itself. That ideal roots the rights and responsibilities of the academic profession in the search for knowledge. Erstwhile defenders of academic freedom, and of the rights and responsibilities of self-governance that attend it, the AAUP has walked off the field.

The leaders of the AAUP should be aware that there is a price to be paid for the abandonment of scholarship as a unique and specialized set of norms. Ironically, this price was noted by the writers of the classic AAUP statement of 1915:

“If this profession should prove itself unwilling to purge its ranks of the incompetent and the unworthy, or to prevent the freedom which it claims in the name of science from being used as a shelter for inefficiency, for superficiality, or for uncritical and intemperate partisanship, it is certain that the task will be performed by others—by others who lack certain essential qualifications for performing it, and whose action is sure to breed suspicions and recurrent controversies deeply injurious to the internal order and public standing of universities.”

At Heterodox Academy, we believe that academic scholarship is a near-sacred practice. The norms of our profession call upon us relentlessly to seek out knowledge, to share and grow in understanding with other knowledge-seekers–whoever they may be, and in whatever country they may reside.

Living up to this norm is not always easy. Indeed, compared to political activism, scholarship may seem an unnatural practice. But it is essential that academic professionals take the lead in reminding each new generation of professors and students what the norms of the scholarly profession are, and why they are worth defending. This is why Heterodox Academy exists. For if we waver in this task, or walk away from this responsibility, other groups of political agents, ones at least as committed to their political agendas as some members of the AAUP, will enter the academic space with political agendas of their own. To forestall that intrusion, we think it would be better if members of our profession heed this advice: “Professors, heal thyselves.”

John Tomasi

President, HxA