🤠 Hey, Texas faculty! As you prep for the spring semester check out our blog for tips + advice. 👇 1) Don’t self-censor, know your rights! 2) Report censorship of your teaching, research, or expression. 3) Organize your department. We are stronger together! aaup-texas.org/blog/f/2025-...

“We need a higher ed system that’s not rooted in students as customers, but in critical inquiry and the development of smart, thoughtful citizens in a democracy who can see through the lies and stand up for the kind of society we want to build.” — Todd Wolfson, AAUP President

Statement Re: OU Discrimination Investigation Today, my client, Mel Curth, submitted her appeal of the University's Institutional Equity Office finding that she engaged in arbitrary and capricious grading of a student's assignment in violation of that student's religious liberty.

Even at research intensive (R1) universities in the US, "tenure density" is already below 50%.

AAUP Raises Alarm Over Palantir’s Work for Ed Department www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-t...

AI is an academic freedom issue! @aaup.org academicfreedomontheline.substack.com/p/new-aaup-r...

What is happening at the University of Oklahoma is an outrageous violation of due process. "They hide behind vague statements & assertions of ‘trust us.’ At this point, they need to show us and not tell us." — OU AAUP

“We can’t build the vision of higher ed that we all want without first standing up to fascism.” — Todd Wolfson, AAUP President

This year, the AAUP proved something powerful: When we fight, we win. Your gift to the AAUP Foundation will power legal challenges, advocacy & education that defend the core values of higher ed. Please donate at the link below. An injury to one is an injury to all. Together, we are stronger.

📢 Vital reading: “Calls for unionization and collective action may not be novel, but that’s what is needed…The bad news is that we are under threat. The good news is that we are not alone.” Let’s renew our commitment to organizing together to protect higher education and democracy in 2026! ✊

New, from me: The NYT reporter who specializes in profiles of beleaguered right-wingers on campus went to New College...and found out that things were going ok! So let me explain some pretty massive errors of omission: 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-nyt-re...

The U.S. Department of Education said its Office of Federal Student Aid would "investigate if Brown violated Section 485(f) of the Higher Education Act…which requires institutions…meet certain campus safety and security-related requirements as a condition of receiving federal student aid."

The Texas African American Photography Archive in Dallas Expands Photo History glasstire.com/2025/12/16/t... It includes more than 60,000 photographic prints—circa 1850s to the 1990s—& over 20 recorded oral histories of largely unknown & previously uncelebrated #Blackphotographers from across TX.

Texas A&M University will not reinstate a lecturer who was fired after a video of her teaching about gender identity in a children’s literature class went viral, despite a faculty appeals panel unanimously concluding that her dismissal was not justified.

A graduate teaching assistant who gave a University of Oklahoma student a failing grade on a psychology essay will no longer be teaching at the university

Higher ed workers are The Nation's public health heroes of 2025. All year, faculty, students & staff at biomedical research institutions nationwide fought the Trump admin's funding cuts on research, health, and higher ed. That was just the beginning. The resistance will be even bigger in 2026.

"To be clear, safeguarding access to US government databases and information sources is a global concern. The US funding cuts have disrupted large-scale research projects and collaborations worldwide. " #ScholarlyCommunication #DefendResearch scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2025/12/22/g...

“The message that it sends is that the people impacted by racial discrimination and harassment don’t matter,” said Paige Duggins-Clay, an attorney with a Texas nonprofit that has worked with families who’ve filed racial harassment complaints with OCR. www.propublica.org/article/trum...

www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-t...

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced Friday that the Trump administration is pausing an immigrant green-card lottery program that granted the Brown University shooting suspect legal permission to enter the United States years ago.

NEW: Public universities in red states, from Texas to Florida, are increasingly required to make their syllabi public. The University of North Carolina may be next. Does "syllabi transparency" help combat distrust in higher ed, or feed ill-informed suspicions of it? www.chronicle.com/article/when...

Faculty at Dickinson just helped launch a Mutual Academic Defense Compact among liberal arts colleges, creating cross-campus solidarity to resist Trump’s coercive funding “compact” and protect academic freedom and institutional autonomy. academeblog.org/2025/12/16/m...

“Among the group of nearly 20 university employees that have left UATX this year were…the president, the provost, the executive director of admissions, and operations staffers.” 🤨 www.chron.com/culture/arti...

🚨🚨According to the revised text, “no system academic course will advocate race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity,” with a narrow exception for certain non-core curriculum or graduate courses. www.texastribune.org/2025/12/18/t...

“OU’s decision to place an instructor on administrative leave following a routine grading dispute—& subsequent failure to defend her from harassment & discrimination…raises serious concerns about the University’s commitment to educational standards, academic freedom, & instructor safety.”

Still need to follow the money $^$^$^ In the closures and mergers, what creditors/vendors get paid???? What were the financials at closure? Who gets the property? What happened to the faculty and staff employment and retirement?

www.aera.net/Newsroom/AER... Congratulations to Angela Valenzuela on her nomination for the presidency of AERA!

“We want the Texas Tech brand and the degrees that we offer to have a high degree of value and marketability. And we want our graduates to make as much money as possible when they graduate.” Hardly an elevated vision for Texas Tech.

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All the centers they’re cutting add up to less than $7 million in spending. UNC athletics budget is $185.4 million for the 2025-26 fiscal year.

“The Center for European Studies, the African Studies Center, the Carolina Asia Center, the Center for Middle East + Islamic Studies, the Institute for the Study of the Americas and the Center for Slavic, Eurasian + East European Studies are all slated to close.” 😥 dailytarheel.com/article/univ...

As total membership in Texas unions grows, the state's labor federation is moving into a new era of leadership, with Latin@s in both of the top roles for the first time: www.texasobserver.org/texas-afl-ci... from @josephinelee.bsky.social

📢📢 Black history should be taught and studied EVERY month. This is a disservice to Texas State students who deserve to pursue an education without political restriction.

“Shortly after this report published, university spokesperson Jayme Blaschke told the American-Statesman that Texas State University will consider bringing the Black History 101 Mobile Museum to campus for future Black History Month programming.”

Ken Paxton’s office launches tip line to encourage enforcement of Texas’ “bathroom bill”

John McCumber looks back on the University of California's history during the McCarthy era to understand how Berkeley's recent naming of 160 scholars associated with “alleged antisemitic incidents” compares with past periods of campus repression.

Grieving for these students, the two who were killed, those wounded, and those whose worlds were shattered. And for their TA. No students or instructors should face such violence.💔💔 These Brown Students Were Prepping for an Exam. Then, a Gunman at the Classroom Door. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/17/u...

Feeding instructors' syllabi to AI software that is likely using them as training data. It's a step away from being asked to surrender all course materials to the machine. An affront to instructors, but also an amazing way for universities to undermine their own information security.

David Rabban’s Academic Freedom: From Professional Norm to First Amendment Right “could not be timelier” in today’s climate of political interference, writes @aaup.org Committee A member Anil Kalhan in a new review for #Academe.

American Academy of Pediatrics loses HHS funding for projects including reducing sudden infant deaths, preventing fetal alcohol syndrome, and more after criticizing RFK Jr. wapo.st/48U8yB2 via @lenasun.bsky.social and Paige Cunningham @washingtonpost.com

My alma mater, Texas A&M, and Texas State University are among the colleges using AI to rewrite lessons and whole curriculums about trans people and race: www.texastribune.org/2025/12/15/t...

There is a lot to contend with in this from @thrasherxy.bsky.social. I’m increasingly coming to this conclusion that schools aren’t capitulating, they are collaborating.

NCAR is quite literally our global mothership. Everyone who works in climate and weather has passed through its doors and benefited from its incredible resources. Dismantling NCAR is like taking a sledgehammer to the keystone holding up our scientific understanding of the planet. Unbelievable.

This Thursday! Empowering AAUP-led discussion on teaching and learning!

"What is needed now is not fewer clinics, but more of them. The U.S. needs to strengthen civic education, protect academic freedom, and invest in institutions that uphold democratic governance"

"What is required, then, is the radical reimagining of pedagogy. Higher education must reclaim academic freedom, dissent, critical thought, and democratic governance not as abstract principles but as urgent practices of resistance." #HigherEd www.counterpunch.org/2025/12/12/h...

I was interviewed for this story about the bleak state of "academic freedom" in Texas universities and how AI is making things worse. Great reporting from Jessica Priest at the Texas Tribune. www.texastribune.org/2025/12/15/t...

The University of Oklahoma made headlines after a grading dispute erupted into controversy, leading OU to put instructor Mel Curth on leave. In the process, OU has not defended Curth from targeted harassment. Sign on to this petition to demand that OU protect principles of academic freedom.