Blogs > Cliopatria > The AAUP Does Walt and Mearsheimer

Mar 28, 2006

The AAUP Does Walt and Mearsheimer


by Cliopatria


Below, Ralph links to a fine piece in today's Inside Higher Ed about the controversy regarding the W/M paper. I was particularly struck by the lengthy comments in the article from AAUP general secretary Roger Bowen. Bowen correctly noted that academic freedom protects all scholarship, regardless of its quality or point of view. But he then added that he would be monitoring reaction to the W/M piece and held the following:

While academics comment on a range of controversial issues all the time, Bowen said that dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian issues posed particular difficulties. Bowen said that one of his “real shocks” at the AAUP was when “a very close friend and colleague” who is Jewish, a “strong civil libertarian,” and has “wonderful values on academic freedom” approached him about trying to urge Duke University to block a group there from organizing a national conference for student supporters of the Palestinian cause. “On that issue, there are blinders,” Bowen said.

I'm suspicious of argument by personal, anonymous anecdote ("As I was riding home today on the subway, I overheard two good friends noting the lack of intellectual diversity in the academy . . ."), but Bowen's anecdote is both distasteful (with his choice to identify the religion of his" close friend and colleague") and off-base: it seems to me perfectly reasonable to question the criteria by which outsiders are invited to speak, or hold a conference, on campus.

Bowen's comments also bring into relief the seemingly one-sided"blinders" through which the AAUP has viewed academic issues related to the Middle East. I agree completely with him that"on that issue, there are blinders." But the only"blinders" with which the AAUP has seemed concerned are pro-Israel blinders. I don't recall Bowen or the AAUP expressing concern when Columbia appointed a MEALAC investigatory committee whose membership consisted of figures who were openly anti-Israel or personally biased. Nor do I recall him saying that the AAUP would monitor the situation to ensure that MEALAC was upholding AAUP policy regarding students' academic freedom. Indeed, neither Bowen nor anyone else at the organization has clarified which AAUP"procedure" was violated by public critics of the Bellagio conference, as former Committee A head Joan Scott claimed.

Could it be that on this issue, the AAUP leadership sees events through"blinders"?


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More Comments:

Robert KC Johnson - 3/29/2006

It's my sense that the opposition to the Duke conference spread well beyond conservatives. I agree that the calls of some for cancelling the conference goes beyond question the criteria for Duke's decision to hold the conference, but the Duke position (perhaps we made a mistake in inviting the conference, but now that we've made the mistake, we're committed to seeing it through) wasn't exactly commendable either.

Regarding the issue of threats to academic freedom, I suppose the question becomes the origins of the threat. In the public at large, there's clearly more sympathy for Israel than the Palestinians. On most campuses, however, there seems much more of an anti-Israel majority. I see the greater threat to academic freedom coming from campus majorities, and so wouldn't agree that the academic freedom of anti-Israel speakers or activists is often threatened on campus. In the public square, of course, that's a different matter.

Paul Stadler Pflumm - 3/29/2006

I would suggest that blocking organizers is not the same as questioning the criteria for invitees.

As a First Amendment fundamentalist, I would further suggest that the threat to the academic freedom of palestinian supporters greatly exceeds the threats to the freedom of speech of Israel's supporters, in the US at least. Please don't get me wrong, neither group should be barred from speaking and writing.

I also wonder if Roger regrets ever having anything whatsoever to do with organizing conferences, since it seems to repeatedly get him in trouble with conservatives.