“Tell Billionaire Marc Rowan Hands Off Higher Ed! No Compact, No Loyalty Oath, No Oligarchs,” read one banner in Manhattan, where AAUP members and allies rallied outside the offices of Rowan’s Apollo Global Management on the November 7 Day of Action for Higher Ed. With signs, bullhorns, and solidarity, faculty members in New York City sent a powerful message: Higher education serves the common good and is a bulwark against authoritarianism and oligarchy.
The scene in New York was a snapshot of what was unfolding at more than one hundred marches, protests, and teach-ins across the country. In partnership with Students Rise Up, the AFT, and Higher Ed Labor United, AAUP members rallied around a vision of a system of higher education that serves students and workers, not billionaires and politicians.
AAUP President Todd Wolfson said the November 7 protests are part of a growing, grassroots pushback against the Trump administration’s “catastrophic” policies, which have slashed funding for vital research programs and targeted students and faculty members with arrest and deportation for lawful speech. “We’re excited to help build a coalition of students and workers united in fighting back for a higher education system that is accessible and affordable for all and serves the common good,” said Wolfson.
The sense of solidarity was evident at the anti-Rowan protest in Manhattan. “It’s clear that faculty, students, and staff will continue to show up in ever-larger numbers in order to defend the free pursuit of knowledge and advance a vision of higher ed as a public good,” New York University professor and AAUP member David Markus told Washington Square News on November 7.
The day of action came on the heels of sustained organizing by AAUP chapters against the Trump administration’s “loyalty oath” compact, which offered preferential treatment to colleges and universities that agreed to adhere to a partisan ideological agenda, and the efforts bore fruit. On November 7, the University of Pennsylvania announced that Rowan, who helped craft the compact, would be stepping down as chair of the board of advisers of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
The growing momentum of higher education organizing by the AAUP has allowed for greater alignment with the broader resistance to Trump’s policies. During the October 18 No Kings protests, which the AAUP cosponsored, members joined millions of other people rallying against authoritarianism in one of the biggest protests against Trump’s policies to date. Larger actions are being planned for spring 2026.