Mitchell Bard
JNS, Nov. 17, 2021
“The entire concept of academic freedom is a creation of faculty (the AAUP and the Association of American Colleges and Universities) not of any of the other stakeholders and it has been set up so that only faculty foxes can guard the campus henhouse.”
While most campus organizations focus on students, I have long maintained that the biggest problem is faculty. The latest example can be found in the journal of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). This is an organization representing faculty that says it “has helped to shape American higher education by developing the standards and procedures that maintain quality in education and academic freedom in this country’s colleges and universities” since 1915. It also seeks “to ensure higher education’s contribution to the common good.”
Before looking at the article by Bill Mullen, “The Palestinian Exception in the Age of Zoom: A Bellwether for Academic Freedom,” consider what the AAUP says about academic freedom:
- In teaching it applies to the discussion of “all relevant matters in the classroom.”
- Outside the classroom, “faculty should strive to be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show appropriate respect for the opinions of others and should make every effort to indicate that they are not speaking for the institution.”
Mitchell Bard is a foreign-policy analyst and an authority on U.S.-Israel relations who has written and edited 22 books, including “The Arab Lobby, Death to the Infidels: Radical Islam’s War Against the Jews” and “After Anatevka: Tevye in Palestine.”
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