The NYT has used some version of this sentence in multiple stories about the Columbia settlement but it is highly misleading. Yes, the Columbia settlement included that pledge, but it also included multiple terms that “dictate academic matters.” www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/u...

The #1 lesson from yesterday’s blowout: Humanities majors killed on the job market 1) Mamdani- Africana Studies 2) Spanberger -French 3) Sherill - Global History

Important new report out from AAUP & MESA, “The data…offers a detailed account of how landmark civil rights legislation – and particularly Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act – has become a primary tool to restrict speech on campus.” www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

“The data, compiled by the Middle East Studies Association and the American Association of University Professors and relying on publicly available records, offers a detailed account of how landmark civil rights legislation…has become a primary tool to restrict speech on campus.”

Harvard AAUP's Ryan Enos explains the importance of colleges working together to combat Trump’s attempts to shake down universities. #defendhighered @ryanenos.bsky.social

Gift link -- Nice explanation of why the Trump "Compact" is antithetical to academic freedom and would be humiliating for schools to sign. Particularly noteworthy that it appears in the WSJ. www.wsj.com/opinion/trum...

W/ @genevievelakier.bsky.social, the @aaup.org today released a letter to the Offices of the General Counsel at US colleges & universities. We detail why the Compact violates the Constitution & urge that no one signs it. www.aaup.org/sites/defaul...

🚨🚨🚨 And THREE stood up! Penn has joined MIT & Brown in rejecting Trump’s loyalty oath compact. When we join together and fight back, WE WIN! No amount of federal bribery is worth surrendering the freedom to question, explore, and dissent. LET’S GO! #DefendHigherEd @aaup-penn.bsky.social

Harvard's AAUP chapter got profiled in the latest issue of Academe magazine! We've had a truly wild year in the eye of the higher-ed hurricane, and you can read a little about it here: www.aaup.org/academe/issu... @aaup.org @academemagazine.bsky.social

PENN IS OUT! That means both institutions that signed prior agreements with the administration have said no. We're at 3 rejections. I told y'all once the second one hit yesterday, the clock started for the rest. www.thedp.com/article/2025...

Their new plan to punish universities: force the IRS criminal division to find cause to strip them of their tax-exempt status. www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

Brown rejected the compact! www.brown.edu/sites/defaul...

We now enter the most dangerous phase, but also the one with the greatest opportunity. The U.S. has thousands of colleges, some run by red state governments, so it's too much to hope that NONE sign up for this federal takeover. But it matters WHO signs up. The administration is taking a risk.

@mit.edu has done an incredibly important service to the nation by being willing to be the first school to reject the administration's "compact." President Kornbluth focuses—and she's right—on the principle that "scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone."

MIT's response to the Trump admin's proposed "compact" is excellent and should be a model for other universities. orgchart.mit.edu/letters/rega...

sign and share and join AAUP actionnetwork.org/petitions/tr...

Game theory, democratic theory, feminist theory, the civil rights movement, and more all agree on this: unite for independence or lose. Great piece by Henry Farrell

I wrote about an under-appreciated aspect of AAUP v. Rubio. It is the first case of the Trump Era to explicitly identify and reject the primary and most pernicious form of speech suppression employed by this Administration: Chill. balkin.blogspot.com/2025/10/aaup...

“Figuring out what to do isn’t something any of us needs to do alone.” My dear colleague Bernhard Nickel on the importance of solidarity and bravery (and AAUP!) in these grim times: www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

The last word on the poisoned chalice that is “the compact.” balkin.blogspot.com/2025/10/the-...

Ok I'm back and buckle up. This is going to be a 🧵. First I want to make sure people understand the most important thing about the proposed "compact" (perhaps better described as a poisoned chalice): The enforcement mechanism.

“This is extortion, plain and simple. It is not hyperbole to say that the future of higher education.. requires that every university reject it…The only solution is solidarity and collective action against this effort at federal control over higher education.” www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/o...

"The federal government should not, under any circumstances, dictate who goes to college, what can be researched, or learned, and what can or can’t be the subject of critical academic inquiry." - AFT President @rweingarten.bsky.social & @aaup.org President @proftwolf.bsky.social

Excellent that Judge Young's ruling has spurred journalists to dig into the trial transcripts. www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/...

The admin’s efforts to get universities to agree to a list of demands in exchange for preferential access to federal funding isn’t just “troubling” as Ted Mitchell, prez of the @aceducation.bsky.social says in this article; it looks blatantly unconstitutional.🧵 www.wsj.com/us-news/educ...

Ok so this is bad but for complicated reasons. Substantively, much of it is terrible explicitly: the anti-trans stuff, the requirement to use force on student protesters, cap on foreign students, content-based "screening" of foreign students, surveillance of foreign students. But some of (cont🧵)

University presidents it’s time for a united front. I mean, it’s past time. What are you going to do.

WE WON: "This case -– perhaps the most important ever to fall w/in..this district court squarely presents the issue whether non-citizens lawfully present here in US..have the same free speech rights as the rest of us. The Court answers this Constitutional question unequivocally “yes, they do.”"

Our little AAUP chapter went 2/2 vs. Trump! Noem and Rubio…misused the sweeping powers of their offices to target non-citizen pro-Palestinians for deportation primarily on account of their 1st Am protected political speech. They did so in order to strike fear into similarly situated non-citizens…

Judge SLAMS the masking of federal agents in ruling finding Trump admin violated pro-Palestine protesters' rights: "To us, masks are associated with cowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klan." storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

In this remarkable opinion, Judge Young concludes it violates the First Amendment for government to deport people because it dislikes their speech, and hopes to chill others from engaging in similar speech.

A good thread on the AAUP v. Rubio opinion and what it means, starring Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the nation's top diplomat, whom the judge resoundingly rebuked.

NEW: A federal judge excoriated Trump in a blistering decision calling the president's efforts to deport pro-Palestinian academics illegal.

Trump-backed targeting of pro-Palestinian campus activists for deportation is unlawful, US judge rules reut.rs/42ikvOq

⬇️ NEWS: “This is a historic ruling that should have immediate implications for the Trump administration’s policies. If the First Amendment means anything, it means the government can’t imprison people simply because it disagrees with their political views." knightcolumbia.org/content/in-l...

"ICE goes masked for a single reason -- to terrorize Americans into quiescence."

BREAKING: WE WON!!! 💥 💥 💥 Federal Judge William G. Young ruled today in our lawsuit against the Trump administration that the policy of arresting, detaining, & deporting noncitizen students & faculty members for their pro-Palestinian advocacy violates the 1st Amendment. Full ruling here:

Judge Young: "This case ... squarely presents the issue whether non-citizens lawfully present here in United States actually have the same free speech rights as the rest of us. The Court answers this Constitutional question unequivocally 'yes, they do.' 'No law' means 'no law.'"

An enormous legal victory for @aaup.org, MESA, and the Rutgers, NYU, and Harvard chapters of AAUP, in a case that Judge Young describes as "perhaps the most important ever to fall within the jurisdiction of this district court."

Awarding scientific grants based on scientific merit? That pales in comparison to my strategy, giving grants based on political loyalty www.washingtonpost.com/education/20...

To read the university’s triumphant all-campus email about restored NIH funding, you’d think UC administrators made it happen. But that’s not true. In fact the UC *Faculty Association* organized the lawsuit; administrators kept their heads down and hoped it’d go away.

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.