AAUP

🚨🚨🚨 BREAKING: Today, the AAUP announced a slate of 12 national political endorsements for the 2026 midterm elections. These candidates will champion higher education as a public good, protect academic freedom, advance debt-free education, & protect the collective bargaining rights of workers. 1/

AAUP President Todd Wolfson: Trump's assault on American higher education is worse than McCarthyism. #defendhighered #mccarthyism

The first section of JAF, "Toward a New Collective," both theorizes and exemplifies the practice of academic freedom as an inherently collective one. Links to the individual articles below. ⬇️

Colleagues…Sign on! @aaup @aaupmason.bsky.social actionnetwork.org/petitions/we...

The Price of Closing a University Museum Fort Hays State University is closing its natural history museum to help absorb a $2.4 million state budget cut. Critics say it’s a short-term solution with potentially negative long-term consequences. https://bit.ly/4erX4bu #EDUSky #AcademicSky #HigherEd

AAUP President Todd Wolfson: Trump's assault on American higher education is worse than McCarthyism. #defendhighered #mccarthyism

Would open door to reverse a decade of rightwing destruction of NC’s public university system. cc: @aaup.org which laid it out in terrific report a couple years ago. www.aaup.org/reports-publ...

Hear AAUP Presents podcast guest @hankreichman.bsky.social break down how the US higher education has, in effect, become a target of a massive extortion racket by the Trump administration. Take a listen the most recent episode and catch up on older ones here --> www.aaup.org/our-podcast-...

Hope you'll listen to this conversation on @aaup.org's Extorted Compliance report. Proud to have played a part in its writing and in this podcast. www.buzzsprout.com/1837772/epis...

Mysha Qureshi, a South Asian UT junior, said students are paying attention to the “shift” on campus. She is concerned that by not calling out the racism toward students, UT is allowing a “hostile” environment toward students of color to grow. “They are not protecting us, Qureshi said.

New episode of AAUP Presents podcast is out! We discuss the AAUP report, “Extorted Compliance: A Threat to Institutional Autonomy, Academic Freedom, & Shared Governance,” which exposes how the Trump admin has extended its pay-to-play approach to governance into higher education. ⬇️⬇️⬇️ bit.ly/47BZn8a

New journal article @aaup.org Journal of Academic Freedom: Context Collapse and Retaliatory Firings: Higher Education in the Wake of Charlie Kirk’s Assassination www.aaup.org/JAF17/contex...

Volume 17 of the @aaup.org Journal of Academic Freedom is now online! Edited by Karim Mattar, the issue examines the "initiatives pursued, strategies deployed, coalitions built, and ongoing work" of academic freedom as a practice of democracy. Check out the full issue at www.aaup.org/JAF17

When we talk about the harms of LLM chatbot products, boosters often point out that "AI" has important research uses. And that's true. But these boosters are often referring to types of machine learning that have absolutely nothing to do with LLM chatbot products. substack.com/home/post/p-...

This week our chapter adopted a statement of support for students speaking out on sexual assault. aaupstanford.org/2026/10/23/c...

“Enacting these recommendations would essentially create a new administrative layer of management, & would discourage experienced faculty from becoming leaders by forcing them to set aside their research—& that will discourage highly qualified faculty from accepting roles in our state.”

9 ways to take action for higher ed workers TODAY! We stand in solidarity with one another's fights for recognition of basic rights, fair wages, academic freedom, & more. Take action at our website or by screenshotting and scanning the QR codes in each image: higheredlaborunited.org/category/sol...

Beware the evolving language of austerity. It started in the 1980s with "free market" and evolved into "efficiency" and then "right sizing." Now in a full-blown ideology far beyond austerity in which relentless cuts are used to restructure every system: "streamlining."

“The people who scream the loudest that there is no value in higher education all have a college degree, and their children are all enrolled in college,” says Chuck Welch in @insidehighered.com’s coverage of the National Student Success Project. Read more: tinyurl.com/2n934aaa

“Where the administration has enacted program eliminations, benefit cuts, hiring austerity, and salary restraint, the AAUP observes that IU has more than enough resources on hand to invest in the excellence of its core academic mission.”

“Where the administration has enacted program eliminations, benefit cuts, hiring austerity, and salary restraint, the AAUP observes that IU has more than enough resources on hand to invest in the excellence of its core academic mission.”

Let's get this party started. #DefendHigherEd Starter Pack:

@hsteffen.bsky.social of Faculty First Responders explores new modes of collective action to defend academic freedom against the backdrop of the dystopian “brave new world” of higher ed. www.aaup.org/academe/issu...

“Enacting these recommendations would essentially create a new administrative layer of management, & would discourage experienced faculty from becoming leaders by forcing them to set aside their research—& that will discourage highly qualified faculty from accepting roles in our state.”

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed is a fierce champion for debt-free higher education & the rights of faculty & students to teach, learn, & research without fear of retaliation. The AAUP is proud to endorse him. Let’s Do This. #HigherEdVoter

Abdul El-Sayed is the kind of champion we need for American higher education. 🔥🔥🔥 Let’s Go! #HigherEdVoter #DefendHigherEd

"Setting up this College is restoring something that was ended. But of course, when it was ended, many, staff lost their jobs, people with years of experience working in undergraduate education. So, this is a wholesale replacement of a college by a new college." – Pauline Strong, UT Austin AAUP

Great to rally with @abdulelsayed.bsky.social, AFT Michigan President Terrence Martin, @aaup.org President @proftwolf.bsky.social, students & union members at Wayne State today! Abdul is fighting for what working people need: more money in their pockets, Medicare for All & less money in politics.

Another packed PSU-AAUP candidate forum! Member voices shaped strong commitments from soon-to-be State Senator Myrna Muñoz & State Rep Tammy Carpenter on raising Oregon up from 46th in higher ed funding nationally. Join us getting out the vote for PSU-AAUP endorsed candidates: linktr.ee/psuaaup.LPAC

Abdul El-Sayed is the kind of champion we need for American higher education. 🔥🔥🔥 Let’s Go! #HigherEdVoter #DefendHigherEd

"They attack higher ed because they're afraid of us. And they should be." - @aaup.org's @proftwolf.bsky.social

PROTECT LIFESAVING RESEARCH FUNDING! Research funding sustains the discoveries our communities depend on & the jobs of faculty, grad workers, postdocs & staff. Elected officials must restore cancelled & frozen grants, fully fund federal research, & stop playing games. #HigherEdVoter bit.ly/47vCnHN

Yale faculty sent President McInnis more than 75 postcards about academic freedom. Here are a few. One calls it “the heart of what makes our job possible”; another describes the word “women” being flagged in gender-history work. Both call for binding protections this term.

Wen-Ying Sylvia Chou, Vani Pariyadath, Natalie Aviles, and Ian Mullins lay out strategies for organizing in the sciences and a vision for rebuilding research infrastructure. www.aaup.org/academe/issu...

I think people aren’t fully aware that the right-wing is spending $200 million / year on their version of the humanities @uncivilcollective.bsky.social www.uncivilcollective.org

“The real casualty will not be our union, but the countless indigent patients that count on essential healthcare. Already understaffing and poorly provided clinical services are hurting the people we serve. 0% raises will mean a complete exodus.” — Diomedes Tsitouras, AAUP-BHSNJ

(Ahem)…👀

In a dispatch from Minnesota, @jennachernega.bsky.social of @higheredlabor.bsky.social draws lessons for higher education unions from the solidarity forged in last winter’s “ICE Out” protests. www.aaup.org/academe/issu...

"Sexual abuse is a free speech issue. A campus where students are pressured to stay silent on abuse, where students are doxxed, threatened & swatted for filing complaints, where victims are forced to share class & living spaces w/ their abusers, is not a campus that respects safety or free speech."

Shared governance is at the core of what AAUP fights for at the University of Michigan and across the country. Here is our response to the recent overreach of our university's president into curricular matters within the purview of the faculty:

Excellent overview of the demise of academic freedom at UT Austin, with great quotes by several AAUP leaders. www.texasmonthly.com/news-politic...

"Sexual abuse is a free speech issue. A campus where students are pressured to stay silent on abuse, where students are doxxed, threatened & swatted for filing complaints, where victims are forced to share class & living spaces w/ their abusers, is not a campus that respects safety or free speech."

"I've come out in favor of a no-confidence vote simply because I was not persuaded that the university administration is actually going to change its structures to listen to students and faculty in a serious, deliberative way." – David Baeman, Cornell AAUP President

3-year degrees don’t solve the problem of affordability of college and don’t consider the neuroscience & cumulative effect of learning. That’s why @aaup.org President @proftwolf.bsky.social & I came out against these degrees in June. www.insidehighered.com/opinion/view...

"I've come out in favor of a no-confidence vote simply because I was not persuaded that the university administration is actually going to change its structures to listen to students and faculty in a serious, deliberative way." – David Baeman, Cornell AAUP President

Maybe universities shouldn‘t be tying which departments and programs they decide to invest in based on projected job trends they have no actual clue about. Why not just invest proportionally in every field of inquiry rather than underfund some disciplines and overfund others?

New in #Academe, @aaup.org General Counsel @veenadubal.bsky.social situates the attacks on immigrant students and scholars within the frames of the civil rights movement and the model-minority myth. www.aaup.org/issue/fall-2...

Great piece from @victorerikray.bsky.social and @joshmayer.bsky.social looking at the crackdown on campus activism that doesn't get talked about often enough in discussions of academic freedom. academicfreedomontheline.substack.com/p/what-kille...