The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has elected as its new president “an ally for those who continue to oppose intellectual diversity in favor of ideological orthodoxy in higher education,” writes Jonathan Turley, professor of public interest law at George Washington University.
AAUP’s move to elect Todd Wolfson, an anthropologist who is an associate professor of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University, comes amid calls throughout the nation for greater openness to diverse views among faculty and students.
In his column Saturday, Turley observed a statement released August 8 by Wolfson that was headlined “Professors Are Not the Enemy. Fascists Are.”
Wolfson’s remarks were focused largely on Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance:
With Vance, American Far-Right authoritarians have succeeded in elevating a fascist who vows to “aggressively attack universities in this country” to within striking distance of their goal: the annihilation of American higher education as we know it. All those who care about higher education, academic freedom, and the future of democracy should prepare for the fight ahead by organizing their campus communities.
“Should he and the dark-money funders backing him gain power, they aim to take control of American higher education and bend it to their will,” Wolfson predicted about a GOP win in November. “Ironically, they would use fear and misinformation to turn colleges and universities into what the Far Right has for years falsely accused them of being: ideological indoctrination centers.”
Wolfson was apparently referencing Vance’s 2021 talk at a National Conservatism Conference, during which he criticized the open hostility in higher education to diverse views and said “we have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country.”
Turley pointed out that “Wolfson could have objected to the tenor of the rhetoric and defended the efforts to preserve pluralism and diversity of viewpoints.” Instead, the new AAUP president “not only officially opposed the Republican ticket as an existential threat to higher education but made defeating such views an objective of the organization.”
Wolfson added:
While attacks on American higher education are nothing new, the scope of the Project 2025 blueprint for a Trump-Vance presidency offers a frightening glimpse into an authoritarian future that would transform American colleges and universities into thought-control factories by stifling ideas, silencing debate, and destroying autonomy. Project 2025 would roll back decades of progress on access to higher education, eliminate protections for LGBTQ+ students and sexual assault survivors, privatize student loans, end loan forgiveness, and, if we take its authors at their word, abolish the Department of Education entirely. We cannot afford to let this happen.
“We are in a crucial moment that will decide the future of higher education for decades to come,” he concluded. “Colleges and universities are the bedrock of American democracy and the engine of social mobility, innovation, and progress. We can’t allow fascists to strip it away. Now is the time to fight.”
Turley wrote in reaction to Wofston’s statement that there is not “a single line” in it “recognizing the lack of diversity of viewpoints at most universities or polling showing that both students and faculty are now engaging in widespread self-censorship under administrators and academics like himself.”
Wolfson’s election as AAUP president may seem counter-intuitive, given the calls for more tolerance, as Turley notes. Wolfson is the author of a book titled “Digital Rebellion: The Birth of the Cyber Left,” and the recipient of a $50,000 grant from the Dodge Foundation “to develop media and journalism collaboration between students and social justice organizations across New Jersey.”
In addition, AAUP issued a statement following Wolfson’s election that “reconsiders the group’s prior categorical opposition to academic boycotts”:
The AAUP’s revised policy maintains that academic boycotts are not in themselves violations of academic freedom and can instead be legitimate tactical responses to conditions that are fundamentally incompatible with the mission of higher education. The statement recognizes that when faculty members choose to support academic boycotts, they can legitimately seek to protect and advance academic freedom and the fundamental rights of colleagues and students who are living and working under circumstances that violate academic freedom and one or more of those rights. In such contexts, academic boycotts are not in themselves violations of academic freedom.
The revised policy, Turley explained, “is clearly part” of Wolfson’s “move to make AAUP even more of a ‘fighting organization.’”
Wolfson, Turley added, could have used his election as AAUP’s president as an opportunity
to reassure the many conservative and libertarian students and faculty. In the face of dwindling numbers of conservative and libertarian faculty, they could have voiced a commitment to resist ideological agendas from either the left or the right. It was a chance to push back on the hyperbole while acknowledging that work must be done to regain the lost trust in academia, which is now at record lows.
Wolfson’s election demonstrates, however, “how the objections of so many at the lack of intellectual diversity and tolerance are having little impact on faculty,” Turley wrote, adding that many academics “offer perfunctory commitments to intellectual diversity while doing little to achieve it. As shown here, they are continuing to maintain and expand the culture that is suffocating our scholastic programs on every level.”
Wolfson’s election, and his views, however, are likely consistent with AAUP’s decision in 2022 to become an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). In a statement at the time, AAUP said the new partnership would provide financial and political support as higher education was already under attack.
“[W]e believe the best way to continue to grow is to work more closely with the AFT to build a stronger, more inclusive movement,” AAUP stated:
Higher education is under attack—austerity, attacks on knowledge and expertise, and increased legislative intrusion into the academy. The AAUP has the expertise to tackle these problems, and the AFT has the resources at the national and state level. Working with the AFT, we can ensure that AAUP professional standards and principles are recognized on more campuses. Importantly, through our affiliation with the AFT, we will be affiliated with the AFL-CIO and our collective bargaining chapters will have affiliations with AFT state federations—organizations with clout in state capitals and in Washington, DC.
