Resisting Demands that Undermine the University’s Mission
As historians, we are well aware of periods in the United States and abroad in which illegal attacks on students, scholars, and universities became a tool of political manipulation and disruption. From the mid-twentieth-century loyalty oath imposed upon California state employees to assaults on students and faculty during anti-war protests of the 1960s, to attacks in Hungary, India, and Turkey in the early twenty-first century, political leaders have seized on universities and the academics who populate them as targets of vilification. We now face that prospect once again in the United States. The sight of international students and faculty being apprehended by masked security agents and denied basic rights—with some facing immediate deportation—sends chills down the spine of anyone who values the rule of law and the democratic order. We readily acknowledge the validity of concerns about rising antisemitism both on and off campus, and are committed to fighting all forms of discrimination, including anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian bias. But the threat of withholding funding from major research universities, in the name of a cynical weaponization of antisemitism, is not just a form of blackmail but is squarely at odds with the well-being of the body politic of the United States.
In the face of this current crisis, we urge our own campus leaders to:
1) Resist any and all attempts to discriminate against, threaten, or arrest members of the university community based on their political beliefs or speech.
2) Reject government exploitation of antisemitism and the conflation of criticism of Israeli policy to antisemitism. These strategies will neither make Jews safer on campus nor protect the principles of free speech and academic freedom on which the university stands.
3) Uphold a model of the university as a bastion of democracy, innovation, and free thought whose mission is to serve society.
4) Join the efforts of the Big Ten Compact in resisting government usurpation of the autonomy and faculty governance of our universities.
This statement received, 37 (78.72%) yes votes, 2 (4.26%) no votes and 2 (4.26%) abstained out of 47 eligible votes.
