For decades, there have been significant labor issues around the use of technology in higher education. Now, the uncritical adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) poses a threat to academic professions through potential work intensification and job losses and through its implications for intellectual property, economic security, and the faculty working conditions that affect student learning conditions.
The AAUP has been dedicated throughout its history to principles of shared governance, calling attention in recent decades to the importance of involving faculty members in decisions related to the adoption of new technologies. Taking a stand against top-down AI implementation is consistent with the Association’s broader commitment to the contributions of higher education to a democratic society. The AAUP’s recent report, linked below, emphasizes that faculty members are best positioned to understand and improve teaching and learning conditions, including the development and implementation of institutional policies around educational technology.
This list of resources includes principles and recommendations; bargaining and union guides; examples of resolutions, statements, and sample syllabus language; sample FOIA and audit requests; and feature articles from the AAUP’s publications Academe and the Journal of Academic Freedom. This page also includes further reading on approaches to surveillance concerns in higher ed and why we fight uncritical adoption of Generative AI (GenAI).
Principles and Recommendations
AAUP Report. Artificial Intelligence and Academic Professions. 2025.
AAUP Statement. Statement on Online Education. 2024.
AAUP Statement. Statement on Intellectual Property. 2013.
AAUP Report. Academic Freedom and Electronic Communications. 2013.
AFT Report. Commonsense Guardrails for Using Advanced Technology in Schools. 2025.
AFT Report. Key Principles for Using Artificial Intelligence. 2025.
An Open Letter from Educators Who Refuse the Call to Adopt GenAI in Education. 2025.
Bargaining and Union Resources
AAUP Resource Guide. Addressing AI in Higher Education.
CSU Resolution for a New CBA Governing the Use of AI
Example Memoranda of Understanding
For Students & Instructors
Rutgers AAUP-AFT AI Impacts and Syllabus Statement
Example Syllabus Language on AI Use
Rutgers English Department Statement on AI
Critical AI @ Rutgers. Teaching Critical AI Literacy.
Critical AI @ Rutgers. Critical AI Literacies: A Guide for Students.
Audits, Procurement, FOIAs, Pensions
Example FOIA Request on AI in Higher Ed
Academic Senate for California Community Colleges. Evaluating Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools in an Academic Setting Rubric. 2024.
Majority Action. “Emerging Technologies, Evolving Responsibilities: Why Investors Must Act to Mitigate AI’s System-Level Impacts.” September 2025.
Procurement Guide: Taraaz and Collaborative Research Center for Resilience. “Key Considerations When Procuring AI in the Public Sector.” August 2025.
Metaxa, Danaë, et al. “Auditing Algorithms.” Foundations and Trends in Human-Computer Interaction 14, no. 4 (2021): 272–344.
Articles from Academe, the Magazine of the AAUP
Britt Paris and Rebecca Reynolds. “Bringing the Fragments Together.” Spring 2026.
“Organizing Against the Machines.” Spring 2026.
– Martha Lincoln and Martha Kenney. “Cal State's War on Working-Class Education.”
– David Kinsella. “Color-Coded Austerity and Shades of Gray.”
– Justine Zhang, Shreya Chowdhary, and Nathan Kim. “AI as a War Issue, War as a Workers' Issue.”
– Troy A. Swanson. “Keeping Humans in the Loop.”
Ulises A. Mejias. “Artificial Intelligence as a Threat to Academic Labor.” Winter 2026.
Catherine McGowan, Britt Paris, and Rebecca Reynolds. “Educational Technology and the Entrenchment of ‘Business as Usual.’” Winter 2024.
Russell Chun. “Faculty Forum: Learning with ChatGPT.” Spring 2023.
Jonathan Poritz and Jonathan Rees. “Academic Freedom in Online Education: Bringing AAUP Principles Online.” Winter 2021.
Articles from the AAUP’s Journal of Academic Freedom
Dubois, Derek. “Paradoxes of Generative AI: Both Promise and Threat to Academic Freedom.” 2024.
Johnson, Natasha N., et al. “Artificial Intelligence, Academic Freedom, and the Evolving Debate over Forgery and Truth in the Twenty-First Century.” 2024.
Zumaeta, Jorge N. “The Economics of Disinformation: Academic Freedom in the Era of AI.” 2024.
Surveillance Concerns in Higher Ed
AAUP Letter to the University of California System Concerning the Adoption of Trellix
AAUP Letter to the University of Michigan Concerning Campus Surveillance
Review of Lindsay Weinberg's Smart University: Student Surveillance in the Digital Age in Academe. Ovetz, Robert. “Refusing AI in Higher Education.” Academe, Winter 2025.
Paris, B., Reynolds, R., & McGowan, C. “Sins of Omission: Critical Informatics Perspectives on Privacy in E-Learning Systems in Higher Education.” Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 73, no. 5 (2022): 708–725.
Crooks, Roderic. “Getting Over Privacy: Surveillance Studies and Edtech.” Connected Learning Alliance, 2022.
Citron, Danielle Keats. “The Surveilled Student.” Stanford Law Review 1439 (2024): 2023-61.
Gourlay, L. “Surveillance and Datafication in Higher Education: Documentation of the Human.” Postdigital Science and Education 6 (2024): 1039–1048.
Monahan, Torin. “On the Impossibility of Ethical Surveillance.” In The Handbook of Communication Ethics, edited by A. Pinchevski, P. M. Buzzanell and J. Hannan. New York: Routledge (2025), 320–331.
Swartz, Mark & McElroy, Kelly. “The ‘Academicon’: AI and Surveillance in Higher Education.” Surveillance & Society 21 (2023): 276–281.
Why We Fight Uncritical Adoption of GenAI
Paris, Britt S., et al. “Fighting Weaponized AI in Higher Education.” Academe Blog, July 2025.
Beignon, Anaëlle, et al. “Imposing AI: Deceptive Design Patterns Against Sustainability.” Computing Within Limits, 2025.
Kenney, Martha, & Martha Lincoln. “Let Them Eat Large Language Models: Artificial Intelligence and Austerity in the Neoliberal University.” Preprint, 2025.
Birhane, Abeba. “The Incomputable Classroom: The Limits and Dangers of AI in Education.” In AI and the Future of Education: Disruptions, Dilemmas and Directions. UNESCO, 2025.
Raden, Justin. “Higher Ed’s Rush To Adopt AI Is About So Much More Than AI.” Defector, October 2025.
Costello, E., & Gow, S. “Authoritarian EdTech.” Dialogues on Digital Society 1, no. 3 (2025): 302–306.
Guest, Olivia, et al. “Against the Uncritical Adoption of ‘AI’ Technologies in Academia.” 2025.