This is what happens the conservative war against DEI has led to: turning down donations for scholarships. www.statesman.com/news/educati...

In the light of ICE's unjustifiable murder of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, AAUP President Todd Wolfson has released a statement urging that ICE should suspend all operation in American cities. Read full statement at link below 👇 and at the graphic in this thread 🧵 #AbolishICE #AcademicSky

Martin Peterson's creative response to being banned from teaching Plato (shared with his permission).

UNC-Chapel Hill obeys the dictates of Project 2025 by unilaterally closing 6 area studies centers. “The administration announced these cuts when they thought no one was watching, but we are watching, and we are here to say to everyone: you do not get to dismantle our education quietly.”

Syllabi review policies at Texas A&M introduce censorship on discussions of race & gender in 200 courses. Restrictions include banning Plato's writings, who "founded Academy, the very first university," Martin Peterson says. "If we cannot freely discuss Plato, we no longer have a university."

aaup-texas.org/blog/f/texas... Guidance on teaching in the new age of censorship, including legally-vetted language about academic freedom for your syllabus.

Harvard has removed a resident dean -- a Black lecturer in psychology -- for writing posts critical of Trump and law enforcement www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...

An associate dean told English faculty “literature with major plot lines that concern gay, lesbian or transgender identities should not be taught in core-curriculum classes…faculty may assign textbooks with chapters that cover transgender identity, so long as they do not talk about the material.”🙃

I'm really proud of this academic freedom syllabus language that the @aaup.org CDAF fellows developed. Having language like this opens up an opportunity to talk with your students about what academic freedom is (and is not). If you add it to your syllabus this semester let me know how it goes!

"A&M officials have also instructed English faculty not to teach books in core classes that have major plotlines concerning gay, lesbian or transgender identities."

PEN America condemns educational censorship at Texas A&M after a professor is told not to teach Plato, a foundational thinker in the study of Western philosophy, merely because his writings discuss questions about love, gender, and human identity. pen.org/press-releas... #censorship #highereducation

A real-life contemporary moral problem. What does an ethics class look like in an authoritarian regime? This post links to the banned syllabus.

“…an intro. sociology course on race and ethnicity was canceled, a comm. course on religion and the arts was renumbered and stripped of core curriculum credit, and a philosophy prof. was told to remove Plato readings and other material related to race and gender from a core course or be reassigned.”

So, the University of Nebraska - Lincoln somehow finds the money to pay the outgoing chancellor $1.1 million in a severance package immediately after closing 4 academic programs and announcing a $27.5 million budget deficit...🤔 The AAUP UNL chapter condemns this irresponsible decision.

Here is the excellent reply by the A&M professor to the censoring of his course on Plato. Note that he emphasizes that the course does not advocate a race or gender ideology—which is the text of the law in question. 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2026/01/07/u...

“A research university that censors Plato abandons its obligation to truth, inquiry, and the public trust — and should not be regarded as a serious institution of higher learning.” — AAUP Texas A&M @nytimes.com @texasaaup.bsky.social @tamu-aaup.bsky.social @texasaft.org

Worried about increased surveillance of syllabi & course curricula at your institution? Check out these resources from the Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom to integrate in your course, such as language for academic freedom to put in your syllabus, a teaching module, and a reading list.

“It was clear that Texas A&M’s new policies were going to lead to conflicts with the 1st Amendment. That the first such conflict involves telling a professor to remove from his syllabus the writings of who created what was arguably the west’s first institution of higher ed is too perfect an irony.”

Statement from the AAUP–Texas A&M Chapter about the censorship of…Plato….

save the classics

Professor Fired for Charlie Kirk Post Gets $500,000 From School, Is Reinstated

"I’m going to pause here just to review: an institution that purports to be a university has told a philosophy professor he is forbidden from teaching Plato." surreal times dailynous.com/2026/01/06/t...

Teachers' Union Sues Texas for Probing Teachers' Charlie Kirk Posts: Teachers' free speech rights were violated by the state agency, the lawsuit alleges.

😮😮Unbelievable. Texas A&M censors Plato readings.

Read more about the lawsuit in our statement here. @texasaft.org @rweingarten.bsky.social @zephcapo.bsky.social

"We didn't want to have to take this to court. But he should know by now that we will leave no rock unturned when it comes to protecting our members and their constitutional rights." - @zephcapo.bsky.social, @texasaft.org

NOW: @texasaft.org & AFT announce a lawsuit against the Texas Education Agency (TEA) and commissioner, Mike Morath. The lawsuit challenges TEA’s unlawful investigations into educators’ protected First Amendment activity following Charlie Kirk's assassination. Watch: www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyyf...

The district court injunction that prevented NIH from capping indirects at 15% was upheld today on appeal! www.reuters.com/world/trump-...

This was published in the dead week between Christmas and New Year’s. If you work in education & were, reasonably, taking a break, maybe you missed it. Don’t miss it.

New: Texas teachers union sues state education agency for investigating social media posts about Charlie Kirk

The firing of Sang Hea Kil from her tenured professorship at San Jose State for her pro-Palestinian speech has major implications for academic freedom and unions at public universities. Despite unanimously winning the faculty hearing, the campus president overturned the decision. Read more here👇

Academics! Join us!

💬 Viewpoint: The rollback of DEI efforts and threats to academic freedom risk undermining the foundational teaching of bioethics, social determinants of health, and structural injustice in #MedEd. ja.ma/4pjdGVF

“The bottom line is that if faculty thought that university leadership was doing an adequate job in protecting academic freedom, scholarship and the autonomy of the university, they wouldn’t have needed to file the lawsuits.” www.politico.com/news/2025/12...

Explore American Science, Shattered A multipart series on how the Trump administration has disrupted labs, upended lives, and delayed discoveries Part 1: Scientists lost a reliable partner, with ‘nothing to replace it’ www.statnews.com/2025/12/04/a... By @mmolteni.bsky.social @aniloza.bsky.social

Important webinar at the end of the month on academic freedom. Register using the QR code in the attached flyer.

When the University stands firmly on the side of academic freedom, integrity, and its own stated values, we all flourish—students, faculty, staff, and the broader communities we serve.” 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

Mark your calendars for these events Feb 10th! ⬇️⬇️

“As the year ended, with higher education exhausted from struggling to stay afloat in the political tsunami, mass shootings at Brown University and Kentucky State University were appalling reminders of the dangers that still lurk well beyond politics". (Patricia McGuire). 1/3

🤠 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