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Last spring, when pro-Palestinian students at Columbia University erected a 50-tent “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” and demanded that the university divest from Israel, President Minouche Shafik allowed the NYPD to make arrests. Mulvey criticized Shafik’s action, and her testimony before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, as “trampl[ing] on students’ associational and free speech rights.” More encampments were created, more arrests were made, antisemitic incidents occurred, and the university switched to hybrid online learning for the remainder of the semester. The May graduation ceremony was cancelled, and Shafik ultimately resigned in August. Mulvey was succeeded by Todd Wolfson, an associate professor at Rutgers, who shares similar ideas and is candid in his contempt for the current administration. Wolfson has called Vice President JD Vance a “fascist,” has defended using DEI in hiring and evaluating faculty, and reversed AAUP’s longstanding opposition to academic boycotts — like those often called for against Israel. He’s a supporter of Faculty for Justice in Palestine–Rutgers chapter and has signed a protest statement from “Jewish members of Rutgers Faculty for Justice in Palestine.” “These statements have drawn criticism that the AAUP is abandoning its historic commitment to defending academic freedom in favor of being too political, too leftist and too anti-Zionist,” according to Inside Higher Ed.. While Wolfson defended the organization’s actions, another previous AAUP president, Cary Nelson, contends the group has gone too far. “We must no longer use AAUP policy as the gold standard for academic freedom,” Nelson, an Israel supporter, wrote in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Nelson told Inside Higher Ed, having a Faculty for Justice in Palestine member lead the AAUP is “like having a KKK member run the AAUP.” FINE PRINT: Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) is a national network of faculty and staff who support Students for Justice in Palestine and groups “who are organizing for Palestinian liberation.” Their Back to School statement in Fall 2024 said Israel was demonstrating “the depth of settler colonial depravity” and said opponents of campus upheaval were “weaponizing fragility.” CASH FROM PUBLICLY-FUNDED UNIVERSITIES The following payments have contributed to AAUP’s annual revenue figures since 2020: https://openthebooks.substack.com/p/professors-pool-public-dollars-to