Leaders of the American Political Science Association will consider a proposed resolution that denounces the German government’s criminal investigation of four academics for their purported ties with an alleged terrorist organization.

The four academics under investigation have not been fully identified, but one of them, known as Matthias B., has been described in the news media as a political scientist affiliated with the Free University of Berlin. The scholars are accused of having associations with a terrorist organization that German federal prosecutors refer to as the “militant group,” but whose existence is disputed by the defendants’ lawyers. The prosecutors assert that the group is responsible for roughly 25 acts of arson since 2001, according to an article published last week in Der Spiegel.

The four academics, however, have not been accused of direct involvement in those arsons or in any other violent acts. Instead, the German government has suggested that they have lent various kinds of support to the militant group, possibly including drafting its manifestos. German authorities have reportedly conducted content analyses of the four suspects’ scholarly writings — comparing, for example, the use of the word “gentrification” in Matthias B.’s publications to its use in the militant group’s anonymous manifestos.

During the political-science association’s annual business meeting, which was held on Saturday in Chicago, Richard E. Stren, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Toronto, presented a resolution that condemns “the use by governments or their agents of scholarly concepts, writing, or field-research contacts as the basis upon which to monitor, detain, or incarcerate social-science scholars and researchers.”

The association’s rules do not allow new resolutions of this kind to be voted on immediately at the business meeting. The association’s departing president, Robert Axelrod, a professor of political science and public policy at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, said that he would refer the resolution to the association’s governing council and to the group’s committee on professional ethics, rights, and freedoms.

Mr. Stren’s resolution closely mirrors a similar statement that was passed last month by the American Sociological Association. His resolution was also adopted last week by the political-science association’s section on urban politics. —David Glenn