The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today welcomed a change in policy by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) that now says scholarly boycotts of academic institutions “can be considered legitimate tactical responses.”
The AAUP revised policy states that “individual faculty members and students should be free to weigh, assess, and debate the specific circumstances giving rise to calls for systematic academic boycotts and to make their own choices regarding their participation in them.”
While the Israeli government is not mentioned in the statement, observers say the change in policy was likely prompted in part by the Israeli government’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.
In a statement, CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper said:
“Freedom of belief and respect for a universal standard of human rights mandates that academics must be free to refrain from supporting or working with educational institutions complicit in human rights abuses – whether land theft, racist discrimination or genocide. We welcome this change in policy by the American Association of University Professors and hope it sends the message that there is a growing international movement to support justice for all people, including at colleges and universities.”
Earlier today, CAIR called on the Biden administration to reverse its plan to give the genocidal Israeli government $3.5 billion to spend on U.S. weapons and force war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to the ceasefire proposal that he keeps attempting to sabotage.
On Saturday, CAIR said that if President Biden “gives a damn about human life,” he will freeze the delivery of weapons to Israel and force a ceasefire after Israel slaughtered more than 100 Palestinians at prayer in Gaza.
CAIR called the mass slaughter of Palestinian worshipers “an attack on Islam.”
Israel has already slaughtered some 40,000 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, and has systematically-destroyed the civilian infrastructure in a campaign of ethnic cleansing, mass starvation and genocide.
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CONTACT: CAIR National Deputy Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell, 404-285-9530, e-Mitchell@cair.com; CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper, 202-744-7726, ihooper@cair.com; CAIR National Communications Manager Ismail Allison, 202-770-6280, iallison@cair.com