Major US academic group approves boycott of Israel in a historic U-turn

In a major U-turn, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has reversed its long-standing opposition to academic boycotts in the wake of last month’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling that accused Israel of practicing apartheid. The ICJ’s decision, coupled with its ongoing investigation into allegations of genocide by Israel in Gaza and the potential for Israeli leaders to face arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court (ICC), appears to have prompted the AAUP to reconsider its long-standing position on academic boycotts.

The AAUP, a union dedicated to safeguarding academic freedom with 500 chapters on campuses across the US, approved a new statement marking a departure from the organisation’s previous stance articulated in its 2006 report “On Academic Boycotts”. Since its founding in 1915, the AAUP 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.

AAUP’s new policy acknowledges that academic boycotts can be legitimate responses to certain circumstances. The statement reads, “Academic boycotts are not in themselves violations of academic freedom; rather, they can be considered legitimate tactical responses to conditions that are fundamentally incompatible with the mission of higher education.”

Crucially, the AAUP now holds 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 to make their own choices regarding their participation in them.” The organisation argues that to do otherwise would contravene academic freedom.

The statement is careful to delineate the boundaries of acceptable boycott practices. It explicitly states that academic boycotts should not involve political or religious litmus tests, nor should they target individual scholars engaged in ordinary academic practices. Instead, boycotts should “target only institutions of higher education that themselves violate academic freedom or the fundamental rights upon which academic freedom depends.”

While the AAUP’s statement does not specifically mention Israel, the timing of this policy change, coming after the ICJ’s ruling and amidst multiple investigations into Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, which has killed nearly 40,000 Palestinians, mainly women and children, strongly suggests that the situation in the besieged enclave has played a major role in prompting this reconsideration.

This policy shift by the AAUP aligns more closely with actions taken by other academic associations in recent years. For instance, the American Studies Association approved measures to boycott Israeli universities a decade ago, and the American Anthropological Association followed suit last year.

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