NOV 17, 2023
The Syracuse University’s AAUP Chapter endorses the position of the AAUP National’s Committee A Statement on “Academic Freedom and Outside Speakers” (2007), which indicates that universities must make every effort to honor the opportunity for campus groups to invite speakers and not cancel these events due to claims about the inability to provide security, lack of balance, or concerns about 501(c)(3) status. In keeping with that statement, the SU Chapter of the AAUP affirms the right of students and faculty to invite speakers to campus who take strong stands on issues of local, national, and global importance. Academic freedom and shared governance requires that faculty and students are free to organize such events without administrative vetting or undue interference. We expect that with enough notice and planning that the university should guarantee the safety and security of these speakers and that their events not be canceled or “postponed.”
We find this statement urgent, especially in the wake of the cancellation of a recent speaker’s teach-in “The Occupation in Palestine” featuring Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi of San Francisco State University on campus. Dr. Abdulhadi was invited to Syracuse University for a teach-in on October 31, 2023 by the Africa Initiative, Black Graduate Students Association (BGSA) and the African Graduate Student Network (AGSN). Dr. Abdulhadi’s visit was canceled on the SU campus by the administration the day of the event, and this was announced at the last minute under the email communication headline issued by the Chancellor and Vice Chancellor: “Prioritizing the Safety of Our Community” (see news article here). While we understand that security risks were assessed and thought to be serious enough to warrant cancellation by the administration and DPS, questions remain: how can the administration of Syracuse University guarantee academic freedom for outside speakers and those who invite them in times of contestation? How are threats against speakers and those who invite them being addressed? How can this kind of last-minute cancellation be avoided? How can we ensure that security is not used as a mechanism to cancel or postpone events? How can Universities ensure greater transparency on the full reasoning of decisions to cancel academic events?
We bring forward points from Committee A’s report to affirm the importance of academic freedom in relation to academic freedom and outside speakers:

• “All members of the academic community will respect the right of others to listen to those who have been invited to speak on campus and will indicate disagreement not by disruptive action designed to silence the speaker but by reasoned debate and discussion as befits academic freedom in a community of higher learning.”2
• Colleges and universities bear the obligation to ensure conditions of peaceful discussion, which at times can be quite onerous.
• Only in the most extraordinary circumstances can strong evidence of imminent danger justify rescinding an invitation to an outside speaker.”
• So long as the range of a university’s extracurricular programming is educationally justifiable, the specific invitations of particular groups should not be vetoed by university administrators because these invitations are said to lack balance. Campus groups should not be prevented from pursuing the very interests that they have been created to explore.
  In the current context of repression and interdiction of particular positions on campus by the administration, this cancellation of the on-campus location was particularly unfortunate. We expect that the strongest possible efforts will be exerted to avoid speaker cancellations or postponements in future.