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Analysis

The AAUP and the BDS Black Hole

The BDS Movement Impact - Highlander
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Creator: Montecruz Foto 
Copyright: Montecuz Foto
Source: Highlander
The BDS Movement Impact - Highlander License details Creator: Montecruz Foto Copyright: Montecuz Foto Source: Highlander

Joe Lockard

Fathom Journal, Mar. 2025

“Part of the ‘scholasticide’ argument has become that it is now not just Gaza, but extends to US higher education, as the Trump administration seeks to decimate and control the intellectual and political life of universities. Thus, Gaza and the fate of US higher education are linked. This has become a rationalization for the AAUP joining the pro-Palestine movement.”

The American Association of University Professors, once the reputable home of defences of academic freedom and shared governance, has fallen victim to entryism. It has become a roost for anti-Israel academics and supporters of the pro-Palestinian BDS boycott movement.

Under the current leadership of its president Todd Wolfson, a media studies professor from Rutgers University, the AAUP has shifted away from its historical model of principled neutral defence of academic freedom, towards a labor union model. The AAUP affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers in 2022 as part of this reorientation.

An energised activist spirit is a positive development, yet also one that has attracted and empowered membership from faculty who would have been limited a few years ago by the organisation’s mission and scope. This limitation no longer holds.

Today, the AAUP has been converted into a front for Palestine advocacy and BDS boycott organising. The AAUP-sponsored National Day of Action on 17 April is heavily an anti-Israel call. More than half the sponsoring organisations are avowed anti-Zionists, including the off-the-wall Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism quartered at University of California-Santa Cruz.

Internal opposition has been marginalised within the AAUP. The Academe blog, the AAUP’s platform for current discussions, published just over 70 essays in the past six months. Nearly half concerned Gaza, antisemitism, or campus protests. They have a monolithic pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel voice. From personal experience of repeated rejection, counter-voices are unwelcome. Instead, readers meet uncontradicted and biased essays, such as Katherine Franke’s highly inaccurate account of her departure from Columbia University. …SOURCE

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