University Faculty are Threatening Academic Freedom
AAUP faculty union decries efforts to end encampments & attack academic freedom, but AAUP ignores protests' violence & Pro-Hamas donations.
Now that Columbia University’s President Minouche Shafik finally did her job and called the NYPD to clear the campus of students protesting in support of Palestine and Hamas (is that redundant? 🤷), the Columbia Chapter of the AAUP is calling for a vote of no confidence in the president as well as other university officials. Why you ask? Well, it seems that some on the Columbia faculty believe that President Shafik violated university policies by calling in the NYPD to remove the encampment of Pro-Palestinian protestors and Hamilton Hall.
Is the AAUP right? Or is this an example of how an organization founded on principles of academic freedom has lost its way?
The AAUP posted a letter last week signed by 56 AAUP or AAUP-related groups decrying “the heavy handed, militaristic response to student activism that we are seeing across the country.” The public is expected to believe that the mini-Hamasistans popping up on university campuses is a lawful exercise of free speech.
When university administrators limit when, where, and how free speech may be exercised, and require advanced applications for permission of such expression, they effectively gut the right itself. To insist that harsh discipline and violent repression are necessary to combat hate on a college campus is a pretext to suppress protest and silence speech.
Harvard University’s Free Speech Guidelines talk about the purpose of a University and its community. Originally published in 1990 it explains that maintaining the integrity of the University community and free speech entails rights and responsibilities. It is the Administration of any university and the faculty that set an example for students, both by their actions and their omissions. The AAUP as the representative of faculty and an advocate for the protection of academic freedom (historically at least) has failed the students. In light of this statement representing AAUP chapters at multiple schools across the United States, it’s proven that these faculty are the biggest threat to academic freedom and higher education.
Peaceful Protest? Really?
Free speech is balanced against peaceable assembly. The federal and state Constitutions governing Columbia University (and other schools) do not guarantee anybody the right to set up a camp with tents occupying public spaces and prohibiting other people from accessing that space. The Hamasistanis of Morningside Heights assaulted Jewish students, threatened Jewish students with future bodily harm, and harassed Jewish students.
In California, the UCLA Hamasistanis were so vicious in their attacks against Jews, one girl was taken to a local hospital for treatment. There are multiple examples of Jews being blocked from accessing various parts of the UCLA campus by the keffiyeh-clad terrorist-wannabes.
Besides endorsing violence as peaceful protest and encouraging the continuing harassment of Jewish students, the AAUP’s position advocates for the continuing disruption of classes and interference with the academic progress of anybody not a fellow-🍉.
Hamas supporters at these AAUP-endorsed rallies have called Jewish students at Columbia as murders, racists, and genocidal. Faculty at Columbia University, some of whom might even be AAUP members, have been called out for intimidating and harassing Jewish students. Some of the stories of what Jews are experiencing on campus from the “peaceful protests” have been shared with Congress, the public, and yes even big donors.
Big Money, But Only the Right Kind
It’s clear (to me at least, and since this in MY newsletter I get to make blanket statements) that the AAUP doesn’t care for Israel or Jews who do not support Hamas.1 The big university donors expressed their horror and anger early on, shocked at the support for Hamas even before the full brutality of the October 7. Parents of Jewish students at these elite universities also communicated their disgust and concern to the administrations that did nothing in the face of disruptions, harassment, and general intimidation of Jews who declined to support Hamas.
AAUP is concerned however, grievously so, about the undue influence that “big money” has on universities. AAUP and others around the country expressed the fear that these money-men are being allowed to improperly exert pressure on university officials. This is believed by AAUP to signal the death of academic freedom if it’s not stopped.
Is the AAUP being reasonable to allege that there is big money interfering with academic freedom?
At the heart of those tensions lie a few questions: How much influence do donors exert over the institutions they support? And what, if anything, do those institutions owe them?
Josh Moody, a writer for Inside Higher Ed, posed this question several months ago in considering the impact - appropriate or not - of wealthy donors terminating commitments or announcing they would no longer be making any contributions until schools like Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania could figure our how to condemn antisemitism being spewed across their campuses and addressed the threats to their Jewish students.
With about $1.5 million gifted by the Mellon Foundation, the AAUP is dedicating resources towards the defense of academic freedom with a Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom (CDAF). AAUP explains that they need to “abandon the ‘campus free speech’ narrative and instead follow the money if we ever want to root out this dangerous network from our universities.”
“Other than being exceptionally rich, most donors have no academic expertise,” Kamola wrote in an email. “As such, they should be free to fund general areas they have a personal interest in—Medieval history or fighting cancer, for example—but should come nowhere near decisions about what gets taught, or researched, which faculty are hired, what programming takes place, much less the statements universities make or how they discipline their students.”
He added that donors have exercised more influence in recent years as higher education becomes more dependent on private philanthropy. And while that influence is often implicit, “university presidents live under the sword of Damocles,” fearful that deep-pocketed donors will walk away over “something a faculty member says or a statement a student group makes.”
If this newly announced Director of AAUP’s project to hunt down the funding of speech that their membership dislikes agrees that donors exert an outsized influence over universities in different ways, he must agree that foreign governments at war with Israel or hosting terrorist organizations may be impacting how students are treated.
Oil Money with Jew-Hating Agenda
Rich individuals are not the only ones donating money to universities. Foreign governments are among the biggest donors. There is no evidence that AAUP or universities are immune from the Jew-hating agenda of many oil-rich countries giving billions of dollars every year to colleges and university across the US. Will CDAF explore the influence of money from foreign governments on academic freedom? Or just the donors with political beliefs that AAUP membership disagrees with?
It would make sense that foreign governments who are donating all this money expect something in return. AAUP’s left-leaning bias ignores that these donors, foreign governments including Jew-hating regimes, are exerting influence on how schools respond to the pro-Hamas protests that began the day after Hamas brutally massacred civilians across Southern Israel. AAUP’s repeated statements in support of Hamasistans at universities across the US and attacks on university presidents removing these colonizers reflects their execution of an agenda funded by the friends and supporters of Hamas.
In October 2020, the US Department of Education reported that there is rampant non-compliance with Section 117 of the Higher Education Act. Among the failures were Yale University (over 4 years) and Case Western Reserve University (for 12 years!). Many of these gifts from foreign countries have gone unreported. Not only is the Palestinian Authority giving money to influence universities, but Qatar - the state hosting the leaders of Hamas - has given over $3 billion since 2012. Yes, I think this influences universities to keep, grant tenure, and even hire new faculty who hate Jews and about whom Jewish students report targeted discrimination and harassment.
AAUP is dedicated to proving that higher education is not a “left-wing indoctrination factory.” Hmmm. It’s hard to understand how someone could say this after the heated defense made of Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters sporting a Nazi-esque uniform at some of his concert by the Left. We are supposed to understand, his defenders claim, that Waters was not expressing Jew-hatred but engaging in commentary on fascism. Does this mean that it is acceptable as a form of satire and commentary if someone dresses in blackface?2
When Erika Christakis raised questions to prompt discussion at Yale on the topic of Halloween costumes, the reaction was to force her to resign. Then there is Penn’s proceedings against Professor Amy Wax considering sanctions for her speech both inside and outside the classroom. While Columbia still employs Professor Mohamed Abdou, famous for expressing his support of Hamas et al., has not been fired. Really! He says so himself in a recent interview. He is employed by Columbia on a contract scheduled to expire on May 30. Instead of firing or suspending Professor Abdou for supporting a foreign terrorist organization, he’s able to finish out his contract. Yay for him!
Free Speech Requires Speaking
President Ron Daniels of Johns Hopkins University recently sent an email to the Hopkins Hamasistani leadership explaining what free speech and peaceful protest actually look like at universities supporting academic freedom.
We recognize that the encampment is useful in seizing our attention. It forces us to confront different frames or narratives on the conflict. But that is as far as it goes. By physically demarcating a space and by gathering, studying, and chanting with only those people who subscribe to a similar worldview on an incredibly complex subject, you fail to honor the university's foundational imperative for conversation across difference, for conversation that aims to test, evaluate, and understand competing claims. An encampment of this nature cannot help but reduce the capacity of those within it to see the common humanity of those who are outside its perimeter. Instead of recognizing and drawing strength from our diversity, we veer to a community of rigid solitudes, a community defined by suspicion, distrust, and, in the extreme, hatred. Along the way, our common humanity is lost.
Respect for the humanity of each person on a university campus is an essential element of discourse. For anybody to learn, to understand opposing viewpoints, to convince those who do not think like you, civility is essential.
This is the reason for academic freedom at American universities, but this is not what happens today. I have seen, heard, and read of various faculty and other people who are not Jewish college students declaring that the Hamas supporters are peaceful and their encampments do not interfere with the university’s mission. In fact, though, this is a gross mischaracterization of what is actually happening on the ground. If AAUP and everybody else wants to know if Jewish students are being affected, don’t presume to know: ask them, not the Hamasistanis colonizing college campuses.
There is no statement from the AAUP criticizing any university faculty for statements made supporting Hamas.
The National Museum for African American History and Culture has a short history of blackface with links to related objects in their collection.