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Press Release
Knight First Amendment Institution, Columbia University
Excerpt: Multiple universities have recently announced that they will consider or rely on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA’s) definition of antisemitism in policing speech on campus.
The following can be attributed to Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. “It’s disappointing that some of the nation’s leading institutions of higher education are agreeing to curtail and punish criticism of Israel in the name of fighting discrimination. As major free speech groups have recognized, using the IHRA definition of antisemitism to delineate the outer boundaries of free speech will have the effect of proscribing or deterring legitimate political speech and scholarship."
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Ghent University suspended postdoctoral scholar Nathan Cofnas as a “precautionary measure” pending a “preliminary disciplinary investigation.” The reason he is being suspended, however, has little if anything to do with him legitimately criticizing Jason Arday’s scholarship last month by documenting plagiarism in Arday’s doctoral thesis. Ghent is instead suspending Cofnas because his expressed public views are misaligned with the university’s values and therefore “creates a reputational risk”. This is not how academic freedom should work.
In July of this year, the American Association of University Professors endorsed Abdul El-Sayed, a candidate in Michigan’s Democratic primary election for U.S. Senate. Reactions from higher ed commentators played out exactly how you might expect: where defenders saw an obligatory bulwark of academic freedom against GOP incursions, critics saw an own-goal that only further justified those attacks.
However justified the AAUP’s decision may have seemed to some, new research suggests that it will only further fracture public trust in higher education.
