With the incoming Trump administration all but declaring war on American universities, it is essential for educators of every persuasion to close ranks in defense of academic freedom. Unfortunately, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), once the “most prominent guardian of academic freedom” in the U.S., has lost its way.

As reported by the Chronicle of Higher Education, the AAUP has lately been under fire from erstwhile allies who believe that the 109-year-old organization has turned away from political neutrality and compromised its core mission.

In just the last four months, the AAUP has repeatedly taken positions that undermine rather than support academic freedom.

In August, the AAUP rescinded its longstanding opposition to academic boycotts, adopted in 2006. The new policy — clearly aimed at Israeli universities in response to the brutally destructive Gaza war — now holds that such boycotts “can legitimately seek to protect and advance … academic freedom and fundamental rights.”

That assertion is self-contradictory. Academic boycotts inevitably create restrictions on scholarly exchanges by barring contact with targeted institutions or faculty. As a former chair of the AAUP Committee on Academic Freedom once explained, “The whole idea of boycotting academic institutions in order to defend academic freedom is utterly wrongheaded.”

In October, the AAUP’s Committee on Academic Freedom issued a statement ostensibly supporting “diversity goals” in higher education, as a way of achieving better “knowledge production [and] correcting blind spots.”

In addition to goals, however, the committee endorsed the use of statements that “require faculty members to address their skills, competencies and achievements regarding DEI [diversity, equity, inclusion]” as factors for “appointment, reappointment, tenure and promotion.”

The use of such mandatory DEI statements in faculty hiring has been criticized as a “litmus test” for adherence to an approved ideological viewpoint, while screening out potential dissidents. Even for those who agree with many DEI objectives (including myself), compulsory statements go too far.

The political impact of mandatory DEI statements is inescapable. The AAUP’s justification for enforced conformity is circular, insisting that “determining the criteria for faculty recruitment, hiring, and promotion is within the faculty’s area of primary responsibility [which] includes deciding whether to adopt the use of DEI statements.”

A faculty vote, of course, can reflect a collective political orthodoxy, which job seekers challenge at their own risk. Only a fool would submit a dissenting DEI statement in support of an application or promotion.

Robert Shibley, of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression observed that mandatory DEI statements naturally lead to viewpoint discrimination because they tend “to filter out people who don’t or can’t agree to act upon the institution’s specific set of views.” Otherwise, he asks, why require the statements at all?

The University of Chicago’s Brian Leiter put it more bluntly, calling the AAUP’s approval of DEI statements “a disgrace.”

The AAUP’s DEI and boycott positions were seriously misguided, but at least they addressed real issues. In the latest development, an AAUP chapter raised an alarm over pretty much nothing at all.

Earlier this month, Cornell University’s AAUP chapter berated Interim President Michael Kotlikoff, for an “egregious threat to bedrock principles of academic freedom” that could “degrade the quality of education” at Cornell. From the heated rhetoric, it might appear that Kotlikoff had fired an iconoclastic faculty member or squelched a professor’s controversial research.

In fact, Kotlikoff had simply responded to an email from adjunct law professor, who had complained about the approval of a course titled “Gaza, Indigeneity and Resistance.”

In a private email, Kotlikoff said he “personally [found] the course description . . . radical, factually inaccurate, and biased,” but also noted that course approvals by the faculty are protected by academic freedom.

Unbeknownst to Kotlikoff, the recipient provided his email to the press, which led Prof. Risa Lieberwitz to charge him with creating a “chilling effect” on how other faculty teach.

Lieberwitz speaks with great authority. She was the AAUP’s general counsel from 2014-24, and she is currently president of the Cornell chapter and a member of the national Committee on Academic Freedom.

I asked her by email how Kotlikoff’s personal email could possibly threaten academic freedom. She referred me to an op-ed in the Cornell Daily Sun, signed by all five executive committee members of the AAUP chapter, demanding that Kotlikoff “cease participating, intentionally or not, in politically motivated attacks against the University and academic freedom.”

Lieberwitz added that Kotlikoff had interfered with both “individual academic freedom in teaching and pedagogical choices” and with “faculty governance by the college curriculum committee in their review and approval process for new courses.”

It certainly appears that none of the AAUP professors read through Kotlikoff’s entire email before chastising him, because they somehow missed the key passage.

Kotlikoff actually wrote that “Cornell’s Bylaws specify that faculty of the colleges, not central administration, are responsible for the curriculum” and approval of the course in question was “rooted” in academic freedom, which allows the professor “to choose the subject matter and method of presentation.”

Contrary to the Cornell AAUP’s representations, Kotlikoff’s private expression, not intended for publication, still got academic freedom right.

These three episodes typify what one critic has called “the fall of the AAUP,” sadly progressing from the abandonment of an admirable principle, to the endorsement of intellectual discrimination, and arriving at a near parody of snowflake academics who rail at imaginary dangers.

The Trumpistas may be celebrating the AAUP’s self-destruction of its credibility. Faculties everywhere can only mourn.

Steven Lubet is the Williams Memorial Professor Emeritus at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law.