Acting in the name of academic freedom, the Modern Language Association, a professional association of professors largely from English departments, has substituted moderate resolutions for at least some of its usual slate of radically leftist causes. What makes this a “man bites dog” story is that an organization that has recently been interested in academic freedom only as rhetorical underpinning for those causes selected and favored by its “radical caucus” as politically correct has abruptly turned a corner and chosen instead to place the general principle ahead of selective partisan causes. Specifically, where the MLA once joined the charge against pro-Israel speakers and advocates while claiming the mantle of academic freedom for opponents and critics of Israel, it has now approved a substitute resolution that explicitly refuses to favor either side of the political divide over Israel:

Furr was the author of the original resolution on the campus climate for critics of Israel. The resolution as he wrote it said that some who criticize Zionism and Israel have been “denied tenure, disinvited to speak … [or] fraudulently called ‘anti-Semitic.’” The resolution called this a “serious danger to academic study and discussion in the USA today” and then resolved that “the MLA defend the academic freedom and the freedom of speech of faculty and invited speakers to criticize Zionism and Israel.” The resolution made no mention of the right of others on campus to embrace Zionism or Israel or to hold middle-of-the-road views or any views other than being critical of Israel and Zionism.

Nelson offered a substitute — which was approved to replace the original by a vote of 63 to 30 — after heated debate. Nelson’s substitute noted that the “Middle East is a subject of intense debate,” said it was “essential that colleges and universities protect faculty rights to speak forthrightly on all sides of the issue,” and urged colleges to “resist” pressure from outside groups about tenure reviews and speakers and to instead uphold academic freedom. Nelson’s resolution did not identify one side or the other as victim or villain in the campus debates over the Middle East and said that academic freedom must apply to people “to address the issue of the Middle East in the manner they choose.”

While many might see this as just another small-stakes battle within an organization of ideologically isolated and self-absorbed academics, it is emblematic of a broader trend within academia to take academic freedom and professional responsibility more seriously. Those who see college classrooms as appropriate sites for political activism are increasingly on the defensive as even those colleagues who often agree with them ideologically question the appropriateness of such use of professors’ powers to shape students’ minds. Furthermore, a growing wave of public reporting the excesses of mob-based campus enforcers of political correctness by groups such as the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has raised the public profile of the issue, forcing those who once enjoyed academia as a microcosm of an enforced ideologically homogeneous utopia to justify their demands for conformity before a wider audience than the echo chambers to which they had become accustomed.

When the AAUP begins to admonish the mobs of political correctness that threaten or assault conservative or pro-Israel speakers as well as caution promotion and tenure committees that use inappropriate ideological criteria under the misleading rubric of professional qualifications with the same vigor that it uses in condemning those rare cases where academic leftists come under ideological attack that threatens their careers, we will know that professionalism within academia has finally begun to place principle ahead of ideology across the board.