AAUP Statement Ends Opposition to Academic Boycotts

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) Council recently adopted a revised policy concerning academic boycotts in its “Statement on Academic Boycotts.”

The American Association of University Professors’ new “Statement on Academic Boycotts” reconsiders AAUP’s categorical opposition to academic boycotts.The statement reconsiders AAUP’s categorical opposition to academic boycotts from the 2006 report, On Academic Boycotts, maintaining that such boycotts are not in themselves violations of academic freedom but can be legitimate tactical responses to conditions that are fundamentally incompatible with the mission of higher education.

As such, the association recognizes that faculty members can legitimately seek to protect and advance the academic freedom and fundamental rights of colleagues and students living and working under circumstances that violate their freedoms or rights.

It reiterates that academic boycotts should neither involve any political or religious litmus tests nor target individual scholars and teachers engaged in ordinary academic practices, such as publishing scholarship, delivering lectures and conference presentations, or participating in research collaborations. Instead, such boycotts should target only institutions of higher education that themselves violate academic freedom or the fundamental rights upon which academic freedom depends.

AAUP’s statement concludes that individual faculty members and students should be free to weigh, assess, and debate the specific circumstances giving rise to calls for systematic academic boycotts and make their own choices regarding their participation in them.