FIRE’s position on academic boycotts has not changed

Writing about the “boycott, divestment, and sanctions” movement against Israel nearly a decade ago, FIRE President Greg Lukianoff argued that academic boycotts of a nation’s institutions or scholars cannot be reconciled with academic freedom:

Academic freedom is a vast and majestic idea that relies on open communication across lines of difference in a global system of checking, arguing, researching, collaborating, and competing to produce better ideas. It’s a critical part of the way we come by new knowledge, creative solutions, and novel perspectives. The idea that a college might ban its scholars from working with scholars of a particular nationality or who work in a particular country in the name of opposing that country’s government is incompatible with this open, liberal system. It’s also foolhardy on any number of levels, including the fact that individual professors’ opinions often in no way reflect or even oppose the policies of their own governments.

FIRE’s position has not changed, nor will it. 

As Hank Reichman, former chair of the American Association of University Professors’ Committee A once argued, “the whole idea of boycotting academic institutions in order to defend academic freedom is utterly wrongheaded.”

Likewise, FIRE has long defended the rights of individual students and faculty to support or to criticize boycotts. That’s their right and a matter of conscience. As Greg wrote in 2015: 

Students and professors must be perfectly free to support boycott, divestment, and/or sanctions against Israel or any other country they wish, and they must not face punishment for this support. As you might expect, FIRE has opposed attempts to punish organizations for supporting BDS, and we have certainly defended professors’ rights to be highly critical of Israel—or, frankly, any other country, person, or idea.

Again, our position has not changed, nor will it. FIRE stands ready to defend freedom of expression and freedom of conscience for students and faculty nationwide, just as we have always done. But while we defend the rights of individual students and faculty, we oppose academic boycotts as a threat to academic freedom. As the AAUP’s 2005 statement on the question argued:

Colleges and universities should be what they purport to be: institutions committed to the search for truth and it's free expression. Members of the academic community should feel no obligation to support or contribute to institutions that are not free or that sail under false colors, that is, claim to be free but in fact suppress freedom. Such institutions should not be boycotted. Rather, they should be exposed for what they are, and, wherever possible, the continued exchange of ideas should be actively encouraged. The need is always for more academic freedom, not less.

That’s as right today as it was then.