Calling itself the “Ad Hoc Committee to Defend the University,” a group of five prominent academics has posted an online rallying cry against “outside groups seeking to influence what is taught and who can teach” in academe. The group is especially concerned about the recent spate of popular campaigns to sink the careers of scholars who criticize Israel.

Taking a page from the playbook of those campaigns, the group has posted an online petition. By signing, academics pledge:

“to speak out against those who attack our colleagues and our universities in order to achieve their political goals; “to urge university administrators and trustees to defend academic freedom and the norms of academic life, even if it means incurring the displeasure of nonscholarly groups, the media among them; “to vigorously promote our views in the media and through the Internet, and to explain the importance of academic freedom to a sustainable and vibrant democracy; “to mobilize our students to defend the values and integrity of their institutions.”

The organizers of the effort are Jeremy I. Adelman, a professor of history at Princeton University and a former editor at the journal Foreign Affairs; Edmund Burke III, director of the Center for World History at the University of California at Santa Cruz; Steven C. Caton, director of Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies; Jonathan R. Cole, a former provost of Columbia University; and Joan W. Scott, a past president of the American Association of University Professors’ Committee on Academic Freedom and a professor of social science at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, N.J. —John Gravois