The AAUP action is in the same vein as Scientific American, National Geographic and other flagship journals making political endorsements over the past decade . They have all destroyed their credibility.
The largest US English organization just dissolved its annual flagship CCCC conference 2 weeks ago. (Blue Sky is ablaze). Can’t say I’m surprised cuz CCCC increasingly advocated ideology with political, DEI language and position statements shoehorning in writing and composing comments. And it didn’t have to endorse a politician to lose credibility when it endorsed an entire political party repeatedly for over 4 decades (overtly demagogued another): https://projectluminas.substack.com/p/ncte-and-the-doublespeak-award-professionalized
I wonder why they bothered to go through the hassle of holding a meeting. 40 out of 4000 is so wildly unrepresentative that it wouldn't have been meaningfully less representative had Wolfson made the endorsement without consulting anyone at all!
The strange thing about this episode is that it involves a party primary where the disfavored candidate is not (as far as I can tell) someone who could reasonably be characterized as an "enemy" of the organization. She is a mainstream Democrat. It would be more understandable (but no more admirable) if the AAUP broke its longstanding policy against political endorsement by supporting, say, someone who opposes Donald Trump. I don't agree with their view that Trump is an existential threat to higher education (or to anything else, really), but at least it would be understandable if they abandoned their position of neutrality in the face of what they viewed as an existential threat. But here, really?
Precisely my thought. Endorsing one Democrat over another makes absolutely zero difference to the likelihood of supportive legislation to higher education.
Or, more precisely (on the assumption that Republicans are more opposed to higher education, which the AAUP seems to think), it makes it MORE likely that the Republicans will win, and hence that higher education will be damaged, since the general consensus, supported by current polling, is that Dr. El-Sayed has a greater chance of losing in a centrist swing state. So - if this were REALLY about higher education policy - the endorsement is actually counterproductive.
Which is what makes me think that this isn't about higher education policy at all, but about Israel, which is the one clear area where Dr. El-Sayed's positions are dramatically different from those of Representative Stevens, and where a lot of activist AAUP members (including, I am guessing, the 40 voters) have strong views which are closer to his than to hers.
In my 12yrs in US higher ed, their education policy and Israel are the same. No distinctions. That’s the danger I think Lukianoff argues lurks in BCIP. Knee-jerk reactions are always reasoned conclusions. Their educational positionality, privilege, and power extend to political realms by necessity (via critical social justice theories).
Support was withheld by the Biden administration for ideological reasons just as much as by the Trump administration. Under Biden, I could not get a renewal of my NSF grant without lying about how much I valued skin-color "diversity" in my grad students.
Delightful synchronicity in this. As we in the Williams Alliance for Free Inquiry (formerly Williams Free Speech Alliance) just posted a piece on viewpoint diversity and will be addressing its importance in the run-up to the beginning of the academic year.
These days it's the professors with non-leftist views that are having their academic freedom threatened. What confidence do we have that the AAUP will stand up for them?
This is such a helpful article. I see your work as learning to be non-polarized, to hold multiple truths. Your framing of the practices for viewpoint diversity is particularly helpful. The ability to question yourself authentically is just a straight up powerful practice for leaders, yet almost never happens. There is one important piece that is missing for me: the role of unconscious identity-based biases e.g. race, gender which have decades of research behind them. The trick is to not to hold fall into identity essentialism (rigid) or identity denialism (also rigid).
A further thought occurred to me. Before the 2020 Presidential election, Nature controversially endorsed Joe Biden for the Presidency. A later study (published in Nature!), by Prof. Floyd Zhang of Stanford, demonstrated that this endorsement did nothing to sway votes toward Biden, but did a lot to reduce trust in Nature in particular and science in general among conservatives. (See https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01537-5).
So yet another reason to oppose this endorsement, even apart from the effect on AAUP's own membership, is that it is highly plausible that a similar effect will occur here: that the endorsement will have done nothing to increase support for Dr. El-Sayed, but will increase distrust of the AAUP, and, by extension, universities in general, among the wider public.
Greg Lukianoff argues, "Suppose you are a professor who opposed El-Sayed, or simply does not share the AAUP’s politics, and your academic freedom is violated. Are you really going to bring your case to the organization that has declared itself a left-wing political union and endorsed the candidate you opposed?" But doesn't that same argument apply to Greg himself, and anyone who takes a position on anything? After all, why would an AAUP member bring their case to FIRE when FIRE has attacked the AAUP? Why would a leftist trust FIRE when FIRE often attacks the left? The answer is that both FIRE and AAUP are principled organizations that try their best to defend all victims of censorship. FIRE and the AAUP both take political positions, whether it's criticizing politicians or endorsing/opposition legislation or endorsing/criticizing politicians. Those stands might alienate some people, but I think we should not be afraid to take political stands in defense of our core values--which the AAUP did by endorsing a candidate who strongly opposes the Trump administration attacks on academic freedom.
The difference is that FIRE is a single-issue organization which demonstrably - on that issue - supports all people, and which only takes political stances on that issue. If you don't agree with FIRE on that issue, then of course you wouldn't take your case to FIRE: why should you? But if you do agree with it on that issue, then it shouldn't matter to you whether FIRE attacks the left or the right at times (and of course it does both), or indeed if it attacks the AAUP: you can trust it on that issue.
But the AAUP isn't a single-issue organization: it is a representative organization, and, as such, it should do its best to keep out of issues unrelated to higher education on which members of that organization are divided. As noted above by Kingsley Browne, the really weird thing about this endorsement is that it is an endorsement in a primary, where neither of the candidates is likely to be very different on the question of higher education policy, but where they are strongly opposed on other issues. So the AAUP sounds (a) disingenuous when it claims that this is about higher education policy, and (b) like an organization which is pushing left-wing policies more or less unrelated to higher education, and which, accordingly, is failing to represent its members as broadly as possible.
Also, is it really true that the AAUP is a "principled organization" that tries its best "to defend all victims of censorship"? Greg's earlier post, which he linked to (https://eternallyradicalidea.com/p/the-fall-of-the-aaup), gave examples to the contrary (Ilya Shapiro, Amy Wax etc.). Again, this seems to be a reason to draw a distinction between it and FIRE.
Should we point out all the people that FIRE has refused to help over the years? I guarantee they've turned down more leftists than the AAUP has turned down racists
I frankly doubt that. In the post I linked to, Greg lists some of the many, many leftists FIRE has supported. (Central Ohio Revolutionary Socialists, Students for Justice in Palestine, DePaul Socialists, LGBTQ Aggies etc.etc. - he names about 20 just in that post, with full links so you can check). I don’t know of any it has turned down and refused to support: can you name a few?
Raz Segal, Texas A&M (which AAUP is suing on academic freedom grounds pretty much destroying Lukianoff's whole premise here) every pro Palestinian student who had their speech rights violated by jackbooted militarized police violence. But I know, I know. None of these count because free speech, at the end of the day, is a right wing ideology that has nothing to offer the left. I'm looking forward to your excuse making
And showing that the AAUP stood up for these people as well does nothing to challenge Greg’s premise. His point is that the AAUP only stands up for people on the left. How does listing people on the left that the AAUP stands up for challenge that?
Well said, and this also highlights the fundamental paradox: The one viewpoint that a group dedicated to viewpoint diversity *cannot* admit to the group and still guarantee such diversity is the viewpoint that viewpoint diversity itself is an obstacle, and something to ultimately be overcome. Yet by the very fact of declaring at least one viewpoint "off limits", the group undermines its claim to respect viewpoint diversity, both in principle and in practice; the act of denying, a priori, at least one viewpoint deemed fundamentally incompatible with core values means that others can eventually be denied and excluded for the same reason if (using that same freedom of diverse expression) a sufficiently compelling argument can be made that they do the same thing.
Put simply, the paradox of freedom of viewpoint expression is that if you make it a core value, it will inevitably either destroy itself, or enable the destruction of your other core values (for any sacred value free to be questioned will inevitably come to no longer be regarded as sacred); but if you do not make it a core value, your other core values will equally inevitably downgrade and eventually destroy it (for any value too sacred to be questioned will devalue questioning itself). Thus freedom of expression, like quantum waveform potential, can only truly exist in a state of uncertainty.
Of course FIRE and Lukianoff don't actually practice what they preach. Lukianoff gave a speech about the importance of viewpoint diversity to his employees at FIRE who are all right wing of some persuasion or another. The diversity of FIRE ranges from center right (further right than Biden Democrats who Lukianoff thought was a greater danger to speech rights than the Trump Administration) like Lukianoff himself and Will Creeley to far right MAGA cheerleaders like Robert Shibley. There is not a single actual leftist in FIRE. Perhaps that explains FIRE's open hostility towards labor particularly academic labor unions
Well reasoned as always. I'm afraid you suffer from a lack of viewpoint diversity. That's why you've become such an anti-woke right wing culture warrior
On the value of authentic dissent: One of my must-read books is “In Defense of Troublemakers”, which makes the case for the practical value of being a principled dissenting voice and the efficacy in persuasion that comes with that - even as people get angry with you, you can be moving their position more than you would by being agreeable.
The AAUP action is in the same vein as Scientific American, National Geographic and other flagship journals making political endorsements over the past decade . They have all destroyed their credibility.
The largest US English organization just dissolved its annual flagship CCCC conference 2 weeks ago. (Blue Sky is ablaze). Can’t say I’m surprised cuz CCCC increasingly advocated ideology with political, DEI language and position statements shoehorning in writing and composing comments. And it didn’t have to endorse a politician to lose credibility when it endorsed an entire political party repeatedly for over 4 decades (overtly demagogued another): https://projectluminas.substack.com/p/ncte-and-the-doublespeak-award-professionalized
I wonder why they bothered to go through the hassle of holding a meeting. 40 out of 4000 is so wildly unrepresentative that it wouldn't have been meaningfully less representative had Wolfson made the endorsement without consulting anyone at all!
This is why I am a FIRE donor.
Preach.
The strange thing about this episode is that it involves a party primary where the disfavored candidate is not (as far as I can tell) someone who could reasonably be characterized as an "enemy" of the organization. She is a mainstream Democrat. It would be more understandable (but no more admirable) if the AAUP broke its longstanding policy against political endorsement by supporting, say, someone who opposes Donald Trump. I don't agree with their view that Trump is an existential threat to higher education (or to anything else, really), but at least it would be understandable if they abandoned their position of neutrality in the face of what they viewed as an existential threat. But here, really?
Precisely my thought. Endorsing one Democrat over another makes absolutely zero difference to the likelihood of supportive legislation to higher education.
Or, more precisely (on the assumption that Republicans are more opposed to higher education, which the AAUP seems to think), it makes it MORE likely that the Republicans will win, and hence that higher education will be damaged, since the general consensus, supported by current polling, is that Dr. El-Sayed has a greater chance of losing in a centrist swing state. So - if this were REALLY about higher education policy - the endorsement is actually counterproductive.
Which is what makes me think that this isn't about higher education policy at all, but about Israel, which is the one clear area where Dr. El-Sayed's positions are dramatically different from those of Representative Stevens, and where a lot of activist AAUP members (including, I am guessing, the 40 voters) have strong views which are closer to his than to hers.
In my 12yrs in US higher ed, their education policy and Israel are the same. No distinctions. That’s the danger I think Lukianoff argues lurks in BCIP. Knee-jerk reactions are always reasoned conclusions. Their educational positionality, privilege, and power extend to political realms by necessity (via critical social justice theories).
I do agree because widthholding funding for ideological reasons, (decreasing viewpoont dversity by jaw boning) IS EXACTLY a threat.
Support was withheld by the Biden administration for ideological reasons just as much as by the Trump administration. Under Biden, I could not get a renewal of my NSF grant without lying about how much I valued skin-color "diversity" in my grad students.
Yes and both things can be bad. Both things are bad.
Why is your rebuttal to a bad thing to bring up more of a bad thing?Because somebody else did it?
You realize that doesn't make sense right?
Because the AAUP (and you) opposed only one of the two bad things, while fully supporting the other.
Once again both are bad. I didn't do as you say you did. You replied to one bad thing with another bad thing.
That's not what I believed. And I didn't wholly endorse the other. You are telling me what I think and you are putting your stuff on me.
Delightful synchronicity in this. As we in the Williams Alliance for Free Inquiry (formerly Williams Free Speech Alliance) just posted a piece on viewpoint diversity and will be addressing its importance in the run-up to the beginning of the academic year.
https://williamsfreespeech.substack.com/p/the-diversity-issue-williams-sidesteps
Must read for all! Academia has been lost for decades and lost all credibility.
The ol’ Lukianoff mic drop.
In the expected context, "Professor" Wolfson spells "Chamberlain" wrong.
Unless he's referring to a noisy northeast German composer or band I've never heard of.
These days it's the professors with non-leftist views that are having their academic freedom threatened. What confidence do we have that the AAUP will stand up for them?
This is such a helpful article. I see your work as learning to be non-polarized, to hold multiple truths. Your framing of the practices for viewpoint diversity is particularly helpful. The ability to question yourself authentically is just a straight up powerful practice for leaders, yet almost never happens. There is one important piece that is missing for me: the role of unconscious identity-based biases e.g. race, gender which have decades of research behind them. The trick is to not to hold fall into identity essentialism (rigid) or identity denialism (also rigid).
A further thought occurred to me. Before the 2020 Presidential election, Nature controversially endorsed Joe Biden for the Presidency. A later study (published in Nature!), by Prof. Floyd Zhang of Stanford, demonstrated that this endorsement did nothing to sway votes toward Biden, but did a lot to reduce trust in Nature in particular and science in general among conservatives. (See https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01537-5).
So yet another reason to oppose this endorsement, even apart from the effect on AAUP's own membership, is that it is highly plausible that a similar effect will occur here: that the endorsement will have done nothing to increase support for Dr. El-Sayed, but will increase distrust of the AAUP, and, by extension, universities in general, among the wider public.
Greg Lukianoff argues, "Suppose you are a professor who opposed El-Sayed, or simply does not share the AAUP’s politics, and your academic freedom is violated. Are you really going to bring your case to the organization that has declared itself a left-wing political union and endorsed the candidate you opposed?" But doesn't that same argument apply to Greg himself, and anyone who takes a position on anything? After all, why would an AAUP member bring their case to FIRE when FIRE has attacked the AAUP? Why would a leftist trust FIRE when FIRE often attacks the left? The answer is that both FIRE and AAUP are principled organizations that try their best to defend all victims of censorship. FIRE and the AAUP both take political positions, whether it's criticizing politicians or endorsing/opposition legislation or endorsing/criticizing politicians. Those stands might alienate some people, but I think we should not be afraid to take political stands in defense of our core values--which the AAUP did by endorsing a candidate who strongly opposes the Trump administration attacks on academic freedom.
The difference is that FIRE is a single-issue organization which demonstrably - on that issue - supports all people, and which only takes political stances on that issue. If you don't agree with FIRE on that issue, then of course you wouldn't take your case to FIRE: why should you? But if you do agree with it on that issue, then it shouldn't matter to you whether FIRE attacks the left or the right at times (and of course it does both), or indeed if it attacks the AAUP: you can trust it on that issue.
But the AAUP isn't a single-issue organization: it is a representative organization, and, as such, it should do its best to keep out of issues unrelated to higher education on which members of that organization are divided. As noted above by Kingsley Browne, the really weird thing about this endorsement is that it is an endorsement in a primary, where neither of the candidates is likely to be very different on the question of higher education policy, but where they are strongly opposed on other issues. So the AAUP sounds (a) disingenuous when it claims that this is about higher education policy, and (b) like an organization which is pushing left-wing policies more or less unrelated to higher education, and which, accordingly, is failing to represent its members as broadly as possible.
Also, is it really true that the AAUP is a "principled organization" that tries its best "to defend all victims of censorship"? Greg's earlier post, which he linked to (https://eternallyradicalidea.com/p/the-fall-of-the-aaup), gave examples to the contrary (Ilya Shapiro, Amy Wax etc.). Again, this seems to be a reason to draw a distinction between it and FIRE.
Should we point out all the people that FIRE has refused to help over the years? I guarantee they've turned down more leftists than the AAUP has turned down racists
I frankly doubt that. In the post I linked to, Greg lists some of the many, many leftists FIRE has supported. (Central Ohio Revolutionary Socialists, Students for Justice in Palestine, DePaul Socialists, LGBTQ Aggies etc.etc. - he names about 20 just in that post, with full links so you can check). I don’t know of any it has turned down and refused to support: can you name a few?
Raz Segal, Texas A&M (which AAUP is suing on academic freedom grounds pretty much destroying Lukianoff's whole premise here) every pro Palestinian student who had their speech rights violated by jackbooted militarized police violence. But I know, I know. None of these count because free speech, at the end of the day, is a right wing ideology that has nothing to offer the left. I'm looking forward to your excuse making
Fire HAS stood up against censorship at Texas A&M ! See e.g. https://www.fire.org/cases/texas-am-university-administrators-cancel-ethics-class-after-professor-voices-opposition and https://www.fire.org/cases/texas-am-university-philosophy-professor-forced-remove-plato-syllabus-based-race-and-gender, and see more generally https://www.fire.org/colleges/texas-am-university/scholars_under_fire?range=10&orderdir=desc&orderby=year&school=Texas+A%26M+University and https://www.fire.org/colleges/texas-am-university/students_under_fire?range=10&orderdir=desc&orderby=year&school=Texas+A%26M+University. It has also stood up numerous times for pro-Palestine students: see https://www.fire.org/cases?_page=1&keywords=students%20for%20justice%20in%20palestine&_limit=6.
And showing that the AAUP stood up for these people as well does nothing to challenge Greg’s premise. His point is that the AAUP only stands up for people on the left. How does listing people on the left that the AAUP stands up for challenge that?
Well said, and this also highlights the fundamental paradox: The one viewpoint that a group dedicated to viewpoint diversity *cannot* admit to the group and still guarantee such diversity is the viewpoint that viewpoint diversity itself is an obstacle, and something to ultimately be overcome. Yet by the very fact of declaring at least one viewpoint "off limits", the group undermines its claim to respect viewpoint diversity, both in principle and in practice; the act of denying, a priori, at least one viewpoint deemed fundamentally incompatible with core values means that others can eventually be denied and excluded for the same reason if (using that same freedom of diverse expression) a sufficiently compelling argument can be made that they do the same thing.
Put simply, the paradox of freedom of viewpoint expression is that if you make it a core value, it will inevitably either destroy itself, or enable the destruction of your other core values (for any sacred value free to be questioned will inevitably come to no longer be regarded as sacred); but if you do not make it a core value, your other core values will equally inevitably downgrade and eventually destroy it (for any value too sacred to be questioned will devalue questioning itself). Thus freedom of expression, like quantum waveform potential, can only truly exist in a state of uncertainty.
Of course FIRE and Lukianoff don't actually practice what they preach. Lukianoff gave a speech about the importance of viewpoint diversity to his employees at FIRE who are all right wing of some persuasion or another. The diversity of FIRE ranges from center right (further right than Biden Democrats who Lukianoff thought was a greater danger to speech rights than the Trump Administration) like Lukianoff himself and Will Creeley to far right MAGA cheerleaders like Robert Shibley. There is not a single actual leftist in FIRE. Perhaps that explains FIRE's open hostility towards labor particularly academic labor unions
You’re unwell Ryan.
Well reasoned as always. I'm afraid you suffer from a lack of viewpoint diversity. That's why you've become such an anti-woke right wing culture warrior
On the value of authentic dissent: One of my must-read books is “In Defense of Troublemakers”, which makes the case for the practical value of being a principled dissenting voice and the efficacy in persuasion that comes with that - even as people get angry with you, you can be moving their position more than you would by being agreeable.
Birds of a feather. The whole lot of them are just a bunch of pikers along with Sanders, AOC, and their candidate of choice.