BY JOHN K. WILSON It’s always distressing during contentious times when neutral statements for free speech are twisted beyond recognition with false smears of bias and bigotry. In a November 27 essay in The Hill, Northwestern law professor Steven Lubet denounced the American Association of University Professors for a November 15 statement, “Polarizing Times Demand…
BY KEVIN HOWLEY In recent weeks, college students across the country have raised their voices in support of the Palestinian people, whose collective punishment at the hands of the Israeli government and their enablers in the United States and across Western Europe is both shameful and horrific. For conservative culture warriors, pro-Palestinian demonstrations on college…
BY CORY JAMES YOUNG I was having a conversation with a graduate student in my department about a possible collaboration when we noticed the television. One of our colleagues was on the Iowa City news providing historical context about the ongoing crisis in Palestine and Israel. Then, even more unexpectedly, a student from my previous…
BY DANIEL A. SEGAL The assault on academic freedom and campus-speech rights for pro-Palestinian students and faculty has been so fast and furious in the wake of October 7 that one hardly knows where to begin. Indeed, even to write that simple—even obvious—sentence feels risky: a voice in my head asks, Can I write that…
BY JENNIFER RUTH The situation in the Middle East demands the best of all of us. Yet so many capitalize on the moment to harness the conflict to their own domestic “culture wars” agenda. Typical are op-eds like this one, arguing that contextualization, when in support of Palestinian refugees, amounts to little more than illiberal…
BY ELLEN SCHRECKER As the tragic conflict unfolds in Israel and Gaza, the AAUP may now face attempts to fire pro-Palestinian professors that could make earlier academic purges look like a tea party. I know whereof I speak. I have studied academic freedom and higher education for over forty years and traced the AAUP’s failure…
BY JOHN AUBREY DOUGLASS There is much to worry about as we approach 2024: attacks on academic freedom, on free speech, on open societies, and attempts to degrade democracy, and not just here in the United States. As I discuss in my article “Here and Abroad, Universities Face an Autocratic Playbook” in the recent issue…
BY JONATHAN GRAUBART The horrifying violence in the Hamas-Israel war has aroused great passions across the United States. Both Hamas and Israel have plenty of blood on their hands. What concerns me here is the restricted space for discussion. Almost all politicians restrict their condemnations to Hamas and have little tolerance for those who address…
Note: At the end of April, the editors of the Harvard Crimson, the university’s student newspaper, penned an editorial supporting BDS and Palestinian liberation. In response,150 members of the Harvard Faculty wrote a statement criticizing the editorial. Another group of faculty penned their own response, which was published in the Harvard Crimson. This letter is…
BY BILL MULLEN The Modern Language Association, one of the largest academic organizations in the world, voted by a margin of 101-93 in the Delegate Assembly in January to support a resolution declaring that the organization would not boycott Israeli Universities. The resolution now goes to a vote of the general membership this week. If…