BY HANK REICHMAN

Yesterday a group of faculty supporters of the BDS movement posted to this blog a statement, “Standing with John Cheney-Lippold,” which called on readers to support University of Michigan Professor Cheney-Lippold’s decision not to write a letter of recommendation for a student seeking to study for a semester in Israel.  They offer four reasons why that decision was justified, most important among them being that “Professors, like any other individual, are entitled to hold political positions and act in a manner that conforms to their stated positions.  Cheney-Lippold endorses the academic boycott of Israel and, in declining to write a letter of recommendation for a study abroad program in Israel, he is aligning his actions with his stated views.”

I have the greatest respect for those who signed this statement and am not unsympathetic with what essentially amounts to an appeal for providing individual faculty members broad latitude in the exercise of their personal conscience.  Nonetheless, I want to argue here against both the general stance embodied in the above quote and the application of that stance in this particular instance.  For while the statement would have us believe that the issue here is solely about the right of a faculty member to act on his/her political positions, I believe the issue is also about the conflict between personal politics on one side, and professional ethics and responsibility on the other.  And while I might not always come down on the side of privileging professional obligations over personal belief, I do in this case.

Before turning to my problem with the general position stated above, let’s look first at this specific case.  Below is the controversial message that Professor Cheney-Leopold sent to his student:

Of course, “many university departments” have not endorsed BDS; certainly Cheney-Leopold’s department has not, as he later acknowledged.  This is not a mere oversight, however, because in making this claim the professor inaccurately gave the student an impression that his action was not, as his supporters suggest, simply an act of individual conscience but part of a broader and widely accepted policy in academia, which it most definitely is not.

But that is a relatively small problem.  The real issue, of course, is whether an individual professor has the right to deny a recommendation to a student solely on the basis, not of the student’s qualifications, but on the basis of the professor’s disapproval of the program to which the student is applying.  I hope no one will deny that faculty members do have a general professional obligation to write letters of recommendation for students.  At the same time, however, no one should be obliged to write any specific recommendation.  Clearly it is both permissible and indeed wise for faculty members to decline invitations to write on behalf of students who they believe unqualified or with whom they are not sufficiently familiar to write anything meaningful.  But that is not the case here, as the final sentence of Cheney-Lippold’s message makes clear.

So, is support of the academic boycott of Israel sufficient justification for denying a recommendation?  AAUP associate secretary Hans-Joerg Tiede suggests it is not, telling Inside Higher Ed, “In general, refusing to write a letter of reference on grounds that are discriminatory would appear to be at odds with the AAUP’s Statement on Professional Ethics.”  John Wilson, an editor of this blog, adds, “I think it is morally wrong for professors to impose their political views on student letters of recommendation.”

Here is the relevant passage from the ethics statement:

As teachers, professors encourage the free pursuit of learning in their students.  They hold before them the best scholarly and ethical standards of their discipline.  Professors demonstrate respect for students as individuals and adhere to their proper roles as intellectual guides and counselors.  Professors make every reasonable effort to foster honest academic conduct and to ensure that their evaluations of students reflect each student’s true merit.  They respect the confidential nature of the relationship between professor and student.  They avoid any exploitation, harassment, or discriminatory treatment of students.  They acknowledge significant academic or scholarly assistance from them.  They protect their academic freedom.

Now, I suspect that the signatories to the statement and other supporters of Cheney-Lippold’s action may respond that his obligation to his beliefs should outweigh his obligation to the ethics of his profession.  But that is a dangerous position.  Consider what might happen if that principle were to become a general rule, a la Kant’s categorical imperative.  How might these colleagues respond to a decision by a pro-Israel professor to refuse to write a recommendation for a student seeking to study at Birzeit University in the West Bank?  The signatories surely oppose efforts by the Israeli government to prevent foreign scholars from teaching at or even visiting that university, as Joan Scott has described on this blog, and I do as well.  But they would in effect do the same to an American student seeking to visit an Israeli university.

The statement claims that “by declining to write a letter of recommendation for a student’s participation in a study abroad program in Israel, Cheney-Lippold is not preventing the student from participating in the program.”  And in a comment one of the signers adds that “this student has the option of asking others to write for her.”  This may well be true, although one can hardly be certain.  We do not know anything about this student, whether she indeed does have other professors who are willing to write on her behalf — and to do so as positively as she apparently believed Cheney-Lippold would.  More generally, in an era in which more and more teaching is being done in large lecture classes and by part-time adjuncts, with whom students may have relatively limited contact, the ability of a student to identify appropriate references can not always be taken for granted.

More important, however, may be that Cheney-Lippold’s claim that many departments endorse his behavior suggests that he would surely like that to be the case, even as he later acknowledged that as yet it is not.  And the statement by his supporters calls on us to endorse his position and also pledge to refuse to write such letters.  But if that campaign were to succeed, could it still be said that students will have “the option of asking others” or that such practices are “not preventing the student from participating in the program?”  I fear there is some disingenuosness here, for clearly one goal of the signatories is precisely to keep these programs from successfully recruiting students.

Which brings me to the argument made in the statement against the Israel study abroad program, specifically the charge that such programs “are not equally accessible to all students attending US universities.”  The statement notes that “the Israeli government has declared its intent to deny entry to members of pro-BDS organizations, such as Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace.  Many students on US campuses are members of these organizations and would be barred from entering Israel.”  This Israeli policy is, indeed, wrong and arguably foolish as well.  I have opposed it publicly, specifically with respect to Israel’s denial of entry to Columbia Law School professor Katherine Franke.  But as one comment on the post notes, we have yet to see specific examples where such discriminatory treatment has actually occurred.  Where it may occur, that would, in my mind, certainly justify a college or university withdrawing from the program and faculty members would be entirely justified in demanding such withdrawal.  But that is a quite different response from the individualist one taken by Professor Cheney-Lippold.

Moreover, a broader principle of declining to write recommendations for programs that “are not equally accessible” might well produce results that I suspect the signatories would find discomfiting.  For example, might a professor who opposes race-based admissions or affirmative action be justified in refusing to recommend a student for a scholarship program directed at a specific ethnic group?  Or would a professor be justified in refusing to write a letter in support of a student applying to a graduate program in theology that restricts admission to those who profess the program’s religion?  I suspect that a day hardly passes in which some faculty member is not asked to recommend some student for some program that is not “equally accessible to all students.”

This brings me to my unease with the general principle proposed in the statement that professors “have the ethical responsibility to stand by our political convictions, to advance social justice, and to expose falsehoods and partial truths” and that they are entitled to “act in a manner that conforms to their stated positions.”  Well, as a general principle, yes and no.  Yes, of course, these are ethical responsibilities, but they cannot be readily disentangled from the faculty’s professional responsibilities to treat students fairly and not to discriminate against those with whom we may disagree.

What if this principle were applied in other contexts?  Can an instructor reject or downgrade a paper because of a disagreement with its conclusions, even if the paper is well-written, clearly argued, and based on evidence, for example, a paper on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that takes a position counter to that of the instructor?  Can an instructor tell a student not to investigate certain topics?  Would a conservative professor be justified in denying liberal activist students services offered to others?  Would that not be standing by that professor’s convictions?

This latter example is not a mere hypothetical.  At Stanford University, where one of the signatories teaches, conservative historian Niall Ferguson encouraged right-wing students to dig up dirt on a left-wing student activist seeking election to the committee running a speaker program that Ferguson advised, writing that “slowly, we will continue to crush the Left’s will to resist, as they will crack under pressure.”  In another note, Ferguson wrote, “now we turn to the more subtle game of grinding them down on the committee.”  I am certain that, his public apology when this was disclosed notwithstanding, Ferguson believed he was standing by his political convictions, advancing his version of social justice, exposing falsehood and generally acting in a manner conforming to his stated positions.  But I certainly hope that the signatories agree that Ferguson blatantly crossed an ethical line, and hopefully not just because they, like me, disagree with his politics.

The statement refers only to political convictions, but what of religious convictions, which are often relevant to issues surrounding BDS and the Israel-Palestine dispute?  To be sure, charges that Cheney-Lippold or his supporters are motivated by anti-Semitism are unfounded and, frankly, despicable.  But there are some real anti-Semites on university faculties as well as more than a few Islamophobes.  Sadly, their convictions may well be more deeply held than the political convictions defended in the statement.  But if we are to permit faculty to in all cases “act in a manner conforming” to their beliefs and positions, what are we to do with them?  And there are other religious differences that would be impacted by this position.  For example, is an evangelical Protestant professor justified in declining to write a recommendation for a student seeking admission to a Catholic institution?  And, for that matter, is a Catholic — or a secular humanist — justified in declining to write a recommendation for a student who wishes to study at Jerry Falwell’s misnamed Liberty University?  I’m not always enamored of “slippery slope” arguments, but I fear that in taking this sweeping stance the signatories are headed for a precipice.

Former AAUP president and BDS opponent Cary Nelson told Inside Higher Ed, “What the professor did violated the student’s academic freedom — the right to apply to study at any program anywhere in the world.”  I’m not certain that anyone has ever established such a specific student right, but his point is well taken.  This is not just about the professoriate and its ethics, but also about the rights and freedoms of students.  I have written elsewhere about student academic freedom (and do so at greater length in my forthcoming book, The Future of Academic Freedom).   That freedom is at heart about the freedom to learn, what the AAUP’s founders called lehrnfreiheit [my thanks to Joerg Tiede for correcting my German spelling; it’s lernfreiheit, the freedom to learn, but lehrfreiheit, the freedom to teach].  But surely if the specific right proclaimed by Nelson has yet to be codified, the general principle of student freedom to learn is at play in this case.  And this leads me to an additional point.  One argument often made by BDS supporters against the AAUP’s opposition to the academic boycott of Israel  (but not, I will again stress, to an economic boycott or to divestment or other sanctions, on which the AAUP is neutral) is that Israel already limits the academic freedom of Palestinians and, arguably, many Israelis as well.  I, for one, don’t doubt that this is quite true and deeply lamentable.  But it misses the point that the AAUP’s stance is based not on the protection of either Palestinian or Israeli academic freedom (the AAUP does not claim to serve scholars outside our borders) but on protecting the academic freedom of U.S. scholars, including the academic freedom of American students to learn what they wish to learn where they wish to learn it.

Two final points in conclusion:  First, what I have written here should not be taken as endorsing any potential disciplinary action against Professor Cheney-Lippold.  While I believe his action was a violation of professional ethics, I think such action would be an unproductive overreaction.  In that limited sense I am, in fact, willing to “stand with John Cheney-Lippold” should he be subjected to inappropriate discipline for this voluntary act of conscience, however professionally misguided I believe it to be.  Second, I should reiterate my respect for the authors and acknowledge that their position is a principled one worthy of serious consideration.  I hope that in this post I have given it such.