Penn’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors released an Oct. 28  letter citing concerns about trustee influence and harassment, asserting that “our university leadership has intensified fear and animosity by associating antisemitism and terrorism with an overly broad range of academic programming and political speech.”

Polly Strong, president of the UT chapter of the AAUP, told Rufo that she believed in intellectual diversity but that a commitment to the concept wasn’t what she heard from him. She said her personal hero is John Dewey, the pragmatist philosopher who advocated for academic freedom, due process, and neutrality in higher learning and asked if Rufo supported those values.

Rufo derided Dewey, saying it would have been better if he’d never been born, and dismissed his values. “Academic freedom, due process, neutrality – those are means, not ends,” Rufo said. “If you have an erasure of ends, what you get is sheer power politics, you get everything reducible to will and domination, and then you get an academic life that drifts into witchcraft, into phrenology, into gender studies.” Rufo concluded by saying that academics who continue to adhere to Dewey’s principles, “frankly, deserve what’s coming.”

Strong was completely unawed by the implied threat. “The ‘ends’ of academic freedom, due process, and shared governance is education for a democratic society,” she said simply. “That is the basis of John Dewey’s vision and many, many university professors believe that today.”

Speech against Israel and its actions does not constitute hate speech or antisemitism. Calls to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel, as well as structural analyses of Israel through the lens of apartheid or settler colonialism, lie in the realm of free speech and academic inquiry regardless of whether or not they are popular, and must not be the subjects of bans in an open society. - Op Ed by the Executive Committee of the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities AAUP Chapter.

Southern Miss is one of the nation's top research facilities, yet its faculty are paid well below the average of similarly rated institutions. The AAUP at the University of Southern Mississippi along with the United Campus Workers, and USM Faculty Senate, held a rally today to draw attention to the dire need for universitywide pay increases.

The Syracuse University Chapter of the AAUP released a statement objecting to recent statements by Provost Ritter that appear to attempt to curtail free and open inquiry including expression of controversial ideas that some may consider wrong or offensive.

In a letter to UT Tyler president Kirk Calhoun, the AAUP stated that the "administration’s action to dismiss Professor Koster without having first demonstrated adequacy of cause in a faculty hearing is fundamentally at odds with basic standards of academic due process."