There was a human chain of anti-Israel protesters to stop the counterprotesters from walking on the public lawn.
Some of them wore T-shirts saying "Solidarity: Rutgers AAUP-AFT", meaning they were teachers at Rutgers. The T-shirts also feature the raised fist logo associated in recent decades with Marxism.
Freedom of expression is important. But the American Association of University Professors seem to want to ensure that this freedom goes only one way.
Professors have every right to publicly and fearlessly express their political opinions outside the classroom. Inside, they must leave space for other opinions. But when their association openly supports only one side of a political question, that chills the ability of students - who are dependent on the professors for their grades, and their entire future - to express their own opinions.
And the AAUP publicly celebrates May Day but not the Fourth of July or Christmas.
The AAUP has been issuing statements and tweets in support of the protesters under the excuse of academic freedom. But I can find nothing about supporting the rights of Jewish students to safely express Zionist opinions on campus.
On the contrary - they are against the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism, falsely claiming that it hinders legitimate criticism of Israel. They want to define antisemitism as merely Nazi-style hate for Jews, and they do not admit what everyone else has finally come to realize: that antisemitism comes from the Right, the Left, from the Arab world and from minorities, and from everyone in between. And they are not just against the internationally accepted IHRA definition - they are openly contemptuous of it, defending their stance not by quoting it but by the logical fallacy of proof by appeal to authority of anti-Zionist Jews.
I cannot find a single statement from the AAUP defending the rights of Zionist Jews on campus to freely speak, to invite Israeli speakers, to walk around without fear, even with hundreds of examples of how Jews have been intimidated even before October 7. Nor has the AAUP ever condemned any of the hundreds of classic antisemitic incidents on campus since October 7.
The theoretical and never occurring fear of the IHRA definition being used to chill speech is prominent in AAUP statements. The very real chilling of speech of proud Jews by the students they are cheering is ignored.
Isn't that also a freedom of expression issue? Apparently those freedoms end when the political opinion is one that the AAUP disagrees with.
The rot at universities is not only from the privileged students who demand the right to have sex on public lawns as "support for Palestinians." It starts with their own instructors, as well as with the administration that caves to student demands given under threat.
