The new reality that is emerging in Texas is that certain topics or ideas are simply off the table in the classroom. The censorship of academic speech and entire fields of knowledge in service to an ideology poses an unprecedented danger to the future of higher education. #AcademicFreedom

Everyone in academia should read this piece about our dear, brilliant colleague @durba.bsky.social www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

"More professors in the United States have been fired for controversial views in the past week than any other week in all of American history." www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

Might as well defend your faculty.

ICYMI, via @leoflores.bsky.social, today the Trump administration casually devastated Puerto Rican universities. periodismoinvestigativo.com/2025/09/puer...

I’m glad faculty are standing up for the university even if the university chooses not to stand up for itself.

A historic lawsuit by UC faculty and unions against the Trump administration's illegal attacks on the UC system. As at Harvard, it's the workers who are showing the leadership this moment requires. www.latimes.com/california/s...

BREAKING: A historic coalition of national & California labor unions led by the AAUP filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration challenging the illegal & coercive use of civil rights laws to attack the University of California system & the rights of their members.

The rampant violations of academic freedom and intrusions on extramural speech are escalating rapidly. Faculty members have the right to speak or write as citizens, free from institutional censorship or discipline. Expression of opinion as a citizen does not constitute grounds for dismissal.

A lot of people who were panic mongering about a woke cultural revolution are conspicuously quiet about a youth activist denouncing a professor for wrong think and that professor being fired as part of a campaign of public shaming by political leaders.

Faculty in red states are being punished for failing to signal in their course descriptions that their classes will include content on "gender ideology." Remind me again which party was appalled by idea of "trigger warnings"? www.kbtx.com/2025/09/09/a...

Here’s a 🧵 on key points in Judge Burroughs’ order in the AAUP/Harvard AAUP’s lawsuit against Trump’s DOJ for ideological funding cuts at Harvard: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

In April, the AAUP & our Harvard chapter sued the Trump admin for demanding that Harvard censor speech & restructure core operations or else face $8.7 billion in funding cuts. We hope this decision clarifies to Harvard’s administration that bargaining w/ tyrannical authoritarians is unacceptable.

This is a HUGE win for American higher education! #DefendHigherEd www.nytimes.com/2025/09/03/u...

We won!! “Defendants used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities … Their actions have jeopardized decades of research and the welfare of all those who could stand to benefit from that research.”

BOOM💥💥💥

When we fight, we win. So proud of all the AAUP-Harvard, HAW-UAW, and HGSU-UAW members who gave declarations in this historic lawsuit. @aaup.org @uaw.org storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

AAUP-HARVARD, AAUP, & UAW WON THE HARVARD CASE!!!! storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

The court's opinion rightly recognizes the importance of academic freedom and the rule of law in our democracy. A huge win for plaintiffs AAUP, UAW, and Harvard University today. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

As the new semester starts, I want to keep the focus on the ongoing genocide in Gaza (and US complicity in it). Honored to have the chance to co-write this with another parent whose child was suspended from Barnard/Columbia for protest activity. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

In addition to the corporations trying to destroy the NLRB and 90 years of labor law, don’t forget a university is also helping, just to fight their own faculty and students.

A1 above the fold in the @nytimes.com. The message is getting through. Keep pushing everyone. We can save the #CDC, save the #NIH from the clutches of #RussellVought #StephenMiller and #DonaldTrump. Keep the pressure up on your members of Congress and the media (letters to editors, op-eds).

the DOJ atty (& 2x Harvard grad) who suggested Harvard showed "wanton indifference to antisemitism" once wrote a paper from the perspective of Hitler & expressed admiration for Mein Kampf stunning reporting from @hilaryburns.bsky.social @talkopan.bsky.social www.bostonglobe.com/2025/09/02/m...

A must-read by Mike Wishnie on why even tenured faculties of private universities should be able to unionize under EXISTING law!! lpeproject.org/blog/why-not...

I'm proud that @aaup.org has been on the front lines fighting this administration's abuses. Trump is, indeed, an aggressively anti-labor president, despite the "workers party now" bs. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/o...

Boston AAUP Chapters in the Streets!!! #Solidarity #LaborDay #WorkersDeserve #DefendHigherEd

I have an op-ed at @inquirer.com today. All of us who care about democracy need to decide how we'll respond as we see our institutions, our work, and our communities being attacked. Many of us in academia are standing up for our values and our students. www.inquirer.com/opinion/comm...

I know there's a lot happening today, but this is sneaking in under the radar. This proposed new rule would absolutely crush foreign PhD students, potentially making it impossible for them to enroll with any certainty of their ability to finish www.politico.com/news/2025/08...

A-freaking-men. For many of our universities, it's becoming clear that faculty, students, staff, alums, and our broader communities will have to push or pull our leaders along.

“The specific cuts [at University of Oregon] reflect a misunderstanding of the essential reasons for the existence of the university. Cuts in teaching & research should always be a last resort, after budgets for administration, athletics, & other nonacademic programs.” www.aaup.org/news/aaup-pr...

"There are more than 19 million college students in the US. Most are well removed from corridors of wealth+power..43% of undergrads attend community college. 25% live with their parents." a listicle for everyone, especially for the NYT editors themselves to learn www.nytimes.com/2025/08/25/u...

"Will Harvard remain a place where important issues can be debated respectfully and constructively, without political interference? Or will we strike a Faustian bargain — selling our souls to regain research funding and political favor?" By @olveczky.bsky.social. www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

My lab's been attacked by an anti-wind group and their lawyers. They threatened the science funding of my whole university, to shut me and my undergraduate research assistants up. NYT just covered it. 1/n www.nytimes.com/2025/08/25/c...

The Trump admin has used funding cuts to threaten universities into negotiations. Join this meeting to explore these settlements’ implications for academic freedom & shared governance. We will discuss what AAUP chapters can do to fight back. 🗓️August 26, 7-8pmET Learn more at the link👇

Punishing universities for "fighting back"--that is, for petitioning the courts for redress of grievances--would be a serious violation of the First Amendment even if Trump's broader campaign against the universities was lawful, which it isn't. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/19/u...

“We must all insist that the practices essential to academic freedom and University autonomy — especially, here, the principle that subject matter experts, not legal counsel, determine curriculum and academic programs — cannot be discarded for political convenience.”

The UCLA Faculty Association has filed a California Public Records Act request for the DOJ ransom letter sent to UCLA, after it was learned yesterday that the UC and the Regents and UCLA administration has no intention of sharing it with faculty.

Independent universities play an essential role in our democracy. But workplace democracy is itself key to that role. That means taking both shared governance and the right of workers to collectively bargain seriously. Disappointing move from Harvard. www.bostonglobe.com/2025/08/15/b...

Yes. Lots of us are trying! www.bostonglobe.com/2025/08/14/o...

"At Harvard, for instance, while the university’s leadership has earned well-deserved plaudits for its legal challenges to the most egregious of Trump’s punitive measures, it was not, in fact, the administrators who took that bold step first. It was the faculty." www.bostonglobe.com/2025/08/14/o...

The purpose of academic freedom is not to allow faculty to live cushy lives free from criticism or constraint. Its purpose is to allow them to investigate widely and report (or criticize) the results openly, instead of allowing politicians to decide what is true and what is not.

U Chicago AAUP fights back docs.google.com/document/d/1...

A few lessons: 1. The Trump administration is not following the law in cutting off funds to universities without due process. Fight them--do not concede (like Columbia). 2. Note that it was faculty NOT administrators that filed the law suit that won back funding.

The lesson here is to litigate, not cower.

Trump’s attacks on Harvard are flagrantly illegal. If he’s so willing to defy the restrictions of federal law, it’s beyond me why he’d respect the restrictions of a “legal settlement.” www.nytimes.com/2025/08/11/u...

It is genuinely shocking how little Trump's attack on universities relies on law and policy. Even this profile of May Mailman, a Harvard-trained lawyer, who is active in the Trump administration's plan to transform higher education, barely mentions legal predicates. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/11/u...

BACK TO SCHOOL special -- @aaup.org Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom has curated practical resources for those facing threats to academic freedom, including legal orgs, digital security, travel, and more. AAUP CDAF First Aid Kit www.aaup.org/sites/defaul...

If you think cuts to funding science is somehow caught up in the “culture wars that have nothing to do with science,” you are missing the point. The entire project of education as a public good is under threat, and a threat to one university is a threat to all. We have to stand together #UCLAResist