By: Fern Sidman

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) — long regarded as the preeminent guardian of academic freedom in the United States — is facing an intense backlash for what critics describe as a moral inversion: defending antisemitic rhetoric and conduct under the guise of intellectual liberty.

As The Algemeiner reported on Thursday, the organization has launched a public dispute with the University of Pennsylvania over its efforts to curb campus antisemitism, accusing the Ivy League school of undermining faculty rights and allowing “government interference” in academic affairs.

In a sharply worded letter to the university administration, the AAUP claimed that Penn’s Office of Religious and Ethnic Interests (OREI) — the newly established body tasked with investigating and preventing antisemitism — was overstepping its authority and endangering “the academic freedom of all faculty and students.”

“Harassing, surveilling, intimidating, and punishing members of the university community for research, teaching, and extramural speech based on overly broad definitions of antisemitism does nothing to combat antisemitism,” the AAUP wrote. “It perpetuates anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, and anti-Palestinian racism, muzzles political criticism of the Israeli government by people of any background, and creates a climate of fear and self-censorship.”

The statement concluded with a warning: “AAUP-Penn will continue to monitor reports related to OREI.”

Yet, as The Algemeiner report indicated, the group’s stance appears to dismiss the experiences of Jewish students who have faced violent harassment, exclusion, and intimidation on campus — incidents that surged dramatically after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 massacre in Israel. Many see the AAUP’s defense of faculty accused of antisemitism not as a principled stand for freedom of speech, but as an attempt to excuse bigotry cloaked in the rhetoric of social justice.

The AAUP’s letter goes so far as to suggest that the university’s investigations into antisemitism themselves amount to discrimination — a claim that has enraged Jewish leaders and civil rights advocates. According to the information provided in The Algemeiner report, the association argued that Jewish students and faculty reporting antisemitic incidents are, in effect, victimizing others by subjecting them to “harassment.”

The letter also accused Penn of disproportionately investigating “protected classes,” implying that Arab and African American faculty are unfairly targeted when allegations of antisemitism arise.

Such reasoning, say critics, inverts reality. “To portray efforts to protect Jewish students as a form of racial harassment is not only absurd, it’s morally obscene,” one pro-Israel faculty member told The Algemeiner. “It’s a deliberate attempt to silence Jewish students and delegitimize their right to safety and dignity on campus.”

The controversy comes amid a broader reckoning over antisemitism in higher education. Since the Hamas atrocities on October 7 — in which over 1,200 Israelis were murdered and 250 taken hostage — campuses across America have seen a wave of anti-Jewish hostility masquerading as “pro-Palestinian” activism. Universities, under pressure from donors and lawmakers, have scrambled to respond, often establishing new offices and programs to monitor antisemitic incidents.

The University of Pennsylvania’s OREI was one such measure, created after months of unrest following the “Palestine Writes Festival” in 2023 — an event that, according to The Algemeiner report, served as a flashpoint for anti-Jewish hate.

As The Algemeiner reported, the “Palestine Writes Festival” was organized by Penn professor Huda Fakhreddine, and featured a lineup of notorious figures known for antisemitic statements, including Refaat Alareer, a Gaza-based academic who once said, “Are most Jews evil? Of course they are,” and Salman Abu Sitta, who blamed Jews for Europe’s economic woes prior to World War II.

The festival also initially invited Roger Waters, the former Pink Floyd frontman, whose long history of antisemitic outbursts — from comparing Israel to Nazi Germany to mocking Jewish symbols on stage — had been well documented in an explosive documentary. According to reports cited by The Algemeiner, one former colleague even recalled Waters yelling at restaurant staff to “take away the Jew food.”

The event triggered a flood of antisemitic incidents on Penn’s campus: Nazi graffiti appeared, and a student stormed into the university’s Hillel building screaming “F*** the Jews” and “Jesus Christ is king!” while toppling tables and podiums.

Following these events, Professor Fakhreddine joined an on-campus rally days after Hamas’s October 7 massacre, where speakers condemned “the Israeli Jew” and glorified “resistance.” Shortly afterward, she filed a lawsuit against Congress, seeking to halt its investigation into campus antisemitism at Penn.

Her lawsuit, The Algemeiner reported, bristled with antisemitic tropes, accusing “billionaire donors, pro-Israel groups, and the media” of conspiring to silence critics of Israel. It dismissed the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism — which recognizes certain forms of anti-Zionism as antisemitic — as “unconstitutional” and a “social engineering plot.”

A federal judge swiftly dismissed her case.

In early 2024, Penn issued a sweeping report pledging to “never again confer academic legitimacy to antisemitism.” The university formally denounced the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel as “discriminatory” and “anti-intellectual,” and vowed to defend Jewish students’ rights to inclusion.

The establishment of the Office of Religious and Ethnic Interests (OREI) was a key outcome of those reforms. Its mandate: to protect academic freedom while ensuring that hate speech does not masquerade as scholarship.

It is this office — created in response to the university’s own failures to address antisemitism — that the AAUP now accuses of “breaking the law.”

According to The Algemeiner report, Penn administrators have so far resisted the AAUP’s pressure, maintaining that combating antisemitism is consistent with the university’s mission to foster a safe and inclusive environment.

The AAUP’s defense of alleged antisemitic behavior is not new. The Algemeiner report recalled that in 2014, the group accused the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign of violating academic freedom when it rescinded an offer of employment to Steven Salaita, who had posted a barrage of antisemitic comments on social media.

Despite acknowledging the content of those remarks, the AAUP concluded that the university had “violated academic freedom” and “cast a pall of uncertainty” over the principle’s meaning.

At the time, The Algemeiner report noted, many Jewish organizations condemned the decision as proof that the AAUP’s defense of “free inquiry” had morphed into a partisan shield for antisemitism.

In recent years, the AAUP’s public positions have increasingly aligned with far-left, anti-Zionist activism. Following the October 7, 2023 Hamas massacre, the organization remained silent for over two weeks. When it finally issued a statement, it mentioned neither Hamas nor the atrocities committed against Israeli civilians, instead emphasizing the “need to protect academic freedom” during wartime.

The Algemeiner reported that this silence coincided with a surge of university faculty openly supporting Hamas or minimizing its crimes — professors who described the massacre as “justified resistance” and called for the destruction of Israel “from the river to the sea.”

In August 2024, the AAUP went a step further by officially endorsing academic boycotts — a stunning reversal of its longstanding opposition to such measures. The new policy, though carefully worded, effectively greenlit participation in the BDS movement, which seeks to isolate Israel and exclude Israeli scholars from global academic cooperation.

The AAUP claimed boycotts could be justified when they “protect the rights of colleagues and students living under circumstances that violate academic freedom.” Jewish and pro-Israel leaders immediately recognized this as a tacit endorsement of BDS.

“By adopting this policy, the AAUP has abandoned impartiality,” one senior university administrator told The Algemeiner. “It has chosen ideology over integrity.”