REFLECTIONS ON ACADEMIC BOYCOTTS

We invited discussion of the Committee A report "On Academic Boycotts" to encourage broader understanding of our perspective and not with the expectation that we would materially change our recommendations. We also anticipated disagreement and hoped that careful attention to counterarguments would assist us in clarifying our conclusions and making them more persuasive. Though we regret the lack of opportunity for dialogue the planned conference would have provided, we believe that the exchange of views in the papers we have received, including the papers of those who asked that we not publish their essays, contributed to both objectives.

The political contention surrounding our efforts to hold the conference arose from differences regarding the competing claims of Israelis and Palestinians, not over the issue of academic boycotts. We certainly do not disagree with those who contend that faculty should engage the Israeli-Palestinian debate. One reason for our support of academic freedom is that it enables faculty and students to express their views on contentious moral and political issues. I do not, however, focus these reflections on the Middle East, because, in writing on behalf of the AAUP, my primary concern is academic freedom and, although the principle of academic freedom provides an important foundation for the free exploration of contentious issues, it does not in itself offer guidance for their substantive resolution.

Limitations on Academic Freedom

One counterargument, explored in some of the papers, maintains that the principle of academic freedom does in itself offer guidance in those instances in which academic freedom has been violated. In these instances, the argument continues, academic freedom may rightly be denied to those who deny academic freedom to others. We understand clearly that academic freedom may be denied through slate or corporate as well as institutional actions, and we agree that academic freedom cannot fairly be invoked to protect those who so abuse it. Advocates of academic freedom should, on the contrary, expose and criticize or censure those, including academics and their institutions, who deny academic freedom to others. We disagree only with regard to the remedy. As an organization fundamentally committed to academic freedom, the AAUP cannot, consistent with our principles, adopt a remedy such as the academic boycott that directy curtails academic freedom.

Our rejection of this specific sanction certainly does not mean, as some surest, that we recognize no limits to academic expression. Although Europeans understandably associate our view of academic freedom with American individualism and the unusually broad latitude the First Amendment affords to individual political speech, the AAUP has never maintained that academic freedom is the unrestricted right of individuals to teach, research, and communicate as they please. In the words of our founders in 1915 "There may, undoubtedly, arise occasional cases in which the aberrations of individuals may require to be checked by definite disciplinary action .... It is, in short, not the absolute freedom of utterance of the individual scholar, but the absolute freedom of thought, of inquiry, of discussion and of teaching, of the academic profession, that is asserted by this declaration of principles." The limitations imposed by our professional responsibilities and subject to review by professional colleagues do not, however, include limitations based upon political, moral, or religious differences-including even such highly offensive statements as those referenced in the preceding papers. AAUP members can and do take positions on many such matters, but the AAUP as an organization recognizes only those limits on academic freedom that are inherent in our professional responsibilities and would impose no others.

Several critics assert that the AAUP perspective entails the untenable view that academic freedom is more important than broadly recognized fundamental human rights and moral principles. This argument again confuses our view of the problem with our view of the remedy. As our critics note, we ourselves defend academic freedom on the basis that it benefits society. So, of course, we recognize the priority of broadly applicable human lights and obligations in identifying social goods and problems. We simply argue that it is unnecessary, and therefore wrong, to violate the principle of academic freedom to achieve such social goods. When, for example, we refer to academic boycotts as a tactic, not a principle, we do not mean to imply that academic boycotts are one of the legitimate means to achieve higher ends. We mean rather that academic boycotts, because they are merely tactics and not inherently required to achieve higher ends, should he rejected in favor of alternative tactics that do not entail unnecessary violations of basic principles.

We believe further that the use of academic freedom to expand rather than to curtail academic freedom is not only principled but effective in practice. The universities did contribute to the critique of apartheid in South Africa. The actual limits on expression in Israeli and Palestinian universities are here in dispute, but thoughtful critique is evident on both sides. We would seek to encourage rather than circumscribe expression. Two recent articles offer pertinent examples of the benefits of encouraging even the limited range of academic discourse in Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship and in China today.2 These essays, though describing radically different circumstances, agree in their observation that academic settings provide opportunities for political discourse unavailable in the larger society. Both emphasize as well the benefits realized through scholarly exchange that would not exist were an academic boycott effectively enforced.