Statement on Attacks on Disciplinary Knowledge

The AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure in March issued a statement, Academic Freedom and Attacks on Disciplinary Knowledge, highlighting the specific dangers to academic freedom and shared governance in the Trump administration’s demand that Columbia University place its Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department into receivership. Implicit in the demand is the unfounded assumption that critical scholarship on the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa produces antisemitism. The targeting of this department—which engages in interdisciplinary scholarship on topics of tremendous international importance—threatens a future where intellectual inquiry would be controlled by the state. Committee A’s statement emphasizes that such governmental intervention, like attacks on the autonomy of academic work concerning the histories of slavery and race, public health, gender and sexuality, and biomedical and other sciences, aims to substitute partisan politics for academic judgment. It urges students, faculty members, and administrators to resist the seeming benefits of an acceptance of these demands or an acquiescence to the Trump administration’s effort to mischaracterize and demean scholarly disciplines.