The American Association of University Professors held its centennial conference and business meeting recently in Washington D.C. In keeping with its goal of defending academic freedom, the AAUP devoted at least two sessions to the hiring controversy of Steven Salaita, the professor who received media attention after losing a potential job last summer for tweeting hate-filled anti-Israel and anti-Semitic posts.
Last July, Salaita tweeted, “Let’s cut to the chase: If you’re defending #Israel right now you’re an awful human being.” He also proclaimed, “Zionists: transforming ‘antisemitism’ from something horrible into something honorable since 1948,” And after three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped, he took to Twitter with “You may be too refined to say it, but I’m not: I wish all the F–king West Bank settlers would go missing.” The boys’ dead bodies were discovered two weeks later.
As a recent college graduate, I can only imagine how scary it would be for an “awful human being” like myself to speak up as an Israel-supporter in one of Salaita’s classes.
One of the AAUP conference sessions discussed social media, civility and free expression on campus. Another session was titled: “From Finkelstein to Salaita: The Rebirth of Illinois Conference Committee A.” The description asserted, “Illinois is ground zero of the academic freedom struggle. Norman Finkelstein and Steven Salaita are the preeminent academic freedom cases of our time. Northeastern Illinois University and National Louis University are among the institutions most recently censured by the AAUP. Illinois Committee A has been transformed from a moribund entity into a staunch defender of AAUP principles. This presentation examines how a conference Committee A can succeed.”
Finkelstein is labeled by the Anti-Defamation League as an “obsessive anti-Zionist” filled with “vitriolic hatred of Zionism and Israel.”
Not discussed at the conference: How the boycott, divestment and sanction (BDS) campaign against Israel’s academics — which Salaita wholeheartedly supports — conflicts with AAUP’s own mission of academic freedom. Steven Salaita himself put out a boycott resolution of Israeli academics when he served on the American Studies Association’s Academic and Community Activism Caucus.
Also not discussed is the fact that after being fired from the University of Illinois, Salaita went on a college lecture tour organized in conjunction with Students for Justice in Palestine, a campus organization that often hosts anti-Semitic speakers and creates displays that equate the Star of David with a Swastika. Its campaign for an academic boycott of Israeli institutions and professors goes against everything the AAUP supposedly stands for.
If Salaita himself is dedicated to attacking freedom by supporting boycotts against academics, we must ask why he is touted as supporting academic freedom at a conference supposedly dedicated to preserving it. Perhaps the American Association of University Professors should have discussed this in a panel instead of supporting a man championing the academic boycott of Israel and violence against Jews.
Eliana Rudee is a fellow with the Salomon Center. She is a Core18 Fellow and a graduate of Scripps College, where she studied International Relations and Jewish Studies. Follow her @ellierudee. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
