BY DANIEL A. SEGAL

Recent actions by Harvard University’s administration merit the Association’s timely consideration and—absent a satisfactory response from Harvard—adoption of a censure of the university’s administration. Issuing this censure will require, however, that the Association adapt and expand its censure practices. Whereas the AAUP’s existing practices are limited to responding to harm to individual faculty from violations of academic freedom and tenure, at Harvard—as at many institutions in recent months—we are witnessing attacks by the administration on the academic freedom of the faculty in toto, or what we can speak of as systemic attacks on academic freedom. The Association must adapt to meet this existential threat to our work as faculty.

According to the Association’s website, “censure results from the Association’s findings that conditions for academic freedom and tenure are unsatisfactory at a college or university.”  There is ample evidence that this is the case at Harvard University today. Roughly a month ago here on Academe Blog, Hank Reichman documented several actions by the Harvard administration that are inimical to academic freedom and corrosive to the institution of tenure.

The most systemic and consequential of these is the administration’s institutional adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) so-called definition of antisemitism.  As is by now well known, IHRA codes speech critical of Zionism and the Israeli state as antisemitic, thus deeming it a form of hate speech. The clear intent and effect of this is to chill—by smearing and by undermining academic freedom protections for—speech supporting Palestinian freedom and equality. This is a weaponization of the category of hate speech, deploying the category not to fight hate but to stifle legitimate speech—specifically, speech recognizing and criticizing Israel’s denial of Palestinian freedom and equality.

There are two further, albeit related, reasons for the Association to stand against the adoption of the IHRA definition by Harvard’s administration. The first is that the administration has, perforce, designated an “official” or “correct” way of thinking about a subject of active classroom and scholarly inquiry. The administration has thus inserted itself into the core university functions of teaching and knowledge production, both of which require faculty autonomy from the administration in order to thrive. The second and related concern is that Harvard’s administration adopted the IHRA definition in settlements of lawsuits with outside parties, and thus outside of and in contravention of shared governance.

Analyzing the Harvard administration’s actions as a case of “anticipatory obedience” to the Trump administration, Reichman’s piece does not discuss precursor attacks on academic freedom at Harvard, ones that occurred before Trump’s electoral victory and inauguration but after Israel initiated its assault on Gaza. These earlier attacks are usefully seen as obeisance by Harvard’s administration to compulsory Zionism, prefiguring its “anticipatory obedience” to the Trump administration that Reichman identified.

Photo by Frank S. Zhou, used with kind permission of The Harvard Crimson. See author’s note below.*

In October of last year, to cite one notable example, Harvard’s administration banned students and faculty from its own libraries for acts of silent reading in those libraries. The offense in these acts, according to Harvard’s president Alan Garber, is that they were collective actions undertaken with the “intention” to “deliver a common message,” first and foremost a message of support for Palestinian freedom.  This, from Harvard’s president, is in equal measure absurd and dangerous.

What should be clear at this juncture is that Harvard’s administration is more committed to suppressing speech in support of Palestinian rights and lives than it is to Harvard’s continuing to exist as a legitimate university defined by robust academic freedom protections, shared governance, and—let us say it—silent reading in its libraries. If the criterion for AAUP censure is that “conditions for academic freedom and tenure are unsatisfactory at a college or university,” as stated on the Association’s website, then the case for censuring Harvard’s administration is strong, even overwhelming.

Yet, as I noted at the outset, censuring Harvard will require that the Association revise and expand its censure process. Until now, the Association has censured institutions only in response to identifiable harm, such as suspension or dismissal, to a specific faculty member, who must bring the matter to the Association as a complainant. This form of AAUP censure fails to meet the challenges of our moment, however. The assault on academic freedom at Harvard (and elsewhere) is not a matter of inflicting harm on a specific faculty member but, quite differently, a systemic attack on the academic freedom of the faculty in toto—that is, of all faculty and of the faculty as a body. If AAUP censure is merited when one faculty member is harmed by administration misconduct, it must also be merited when the faculty plurally and collectively are so harmed.

To avoid any confusion that might result from adapting and expanding AAUP censure in this way, the Association should henceforth recognize two types of censure: (1) censure for harm to a specific faculty member and (2) censure for harm to the faculty in toto.

Regarding the second type of censure, it seems reasonable that any faculty member at a given institution (and arguably, even those outside it) should have standing to bring their concerns to the Association for a preliminary assessment. In addition, the harms of systemic attacks on academic freedom are too immediate, pervasive, and grievous—specifically in terms of their chilling effects on classroom teaching and protected campus and extramural speech—for the Association to respond only after a specific faculty member has been terminated or suspended.

We also should note that the Association’s existing procedures normally require an investigation by an ad hoc committee. This makes perfect sense given that personnel decisions are made outside of the public eye, with concerns for confidentiality and privacy. The actions of Harvard’s administration that I have discussed here, by contrast, are a matter of public record, with an abundance of readily accessible and citable documentation. In such cases, the Association’s procedures already stipulate, in clause 3, that the Association can prepare and issue a report without proceeding with an investigation. Following such a report, and unless Harvard responded to adopting sufficient “corrective measures,” the Association should proceed to censure Harvard’s administration.

Until now, the Association has responded to systemic attacks on academic freedom largely through policy statements, such as the recent, “Against Anticipatory Obedience.” These statements of policy make important contributions to our collective understanding and struggle, and should continue. But censure is an additional and escalated action that the Association must wield in this moment. I suspect, moreover, that we will need still other escalated actions, including institutional boycotts and work stoppages.

It is time to fight back fiercely. It is time to censure Harvard.

Daniel A. Segal is the Jean M. Pitzer Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and professor emeritus of history at Pitzer College of the Claremont Colleges. His scholarship ranges from Jane Austen (with Richard Handler) to theorizing states and nonstates in world history. He is a past president of the Claremont Colleges AAUP chapter and organizes with Jewish Voice for Peace and TIAA-Divest!

* Harvard students hold a silent read-in in Widener Library in support of the people of Gaza in September 2024. Administrators and campus security surveil the students and require them to show their IDs. Note both the keffiyehs and common message, “Imagine It Happened Here”; note also the dissenting voice in support of the Israeli state on the left side in the rear of the photograph.