2025 AAUP Updates

A new AAUP report, Academic Freedom and Tenure Muhlenberg College, concludes that the administration, in initially dismissing Dr. Maura Finkelstein, acted in violation of AAUP-supported principles and standards of academic freedom and due process. The report also found that the college’s equal opportunity and nondiscrimination policies, developed by outside consultants, do not sufficiently protect academic freedom and due process, nor do they comport with widely accepted standards of academic governance.

President Donald Trump’s executive order on accreditation is yet another attempt to dictate what is taught, learned, said and done by college students and instructors. Threats to remove accreditors from their roles are transparent attempts to consolidate more power in the hands of the Trump administration in order to stifle teaching and research. These attacks are aimed at removing educational decision-making from educators and reshaping higher education to fit an authoritarian political agenda.

The national AAUP and our Harvard chapter filed a lawsuit on Friday seeking to block the Trump administration from demanding that Harvard University restrict speech and restructure its core operations or else face the cancellation of $8.7 billion in federal funding for the university and its affiliated hospitals.

This week, the AAUP and allies filed two separate friend-of-the-court briefs. With the Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality, the AAUP submitted a brief supporting the law firm Perkins Coie in its battle against the Trump administration. Perkins Coie was the subject of an executive order which limited the law firm’s ability to represent government contractors and access federal buildings. Unlike some of the biggest US law firms, who have struck deals with the Trump administration, Perkins Coie sued the Trump administration. The AAUP’s brief focuses on the harms that will be caused if lawyers are afraid to take on cases or make certain arguments for fear of retaliation by the government, and discusses the dangerous position taken by the administration through its casual invocation of national security to justify all manner of actions and to push back against robust judicial review. 

Thirty faculty groups, including seventeen AAUP chapters, organized to join an amicus brief urging a preliminary injunction against ideological deportations of students and scholars. AAUP members from public and private institutions, from community colleges and research universities, from Texas to Minnesota, California to New Hampshire, and points in between are exercising solidarity to protect students and co-workers.

Preliminary findings for the 2024–25 Faculty Compensation Survey are now available, featuring institution-level appendices, summary tables, and explanation of statistical data.

The Trump administration has now turned its sights on a small agency that provides support for community programs in every state. The National Endowment for the Humanities, which funds museums, historic sites, libraries, educators and media outlets across the country, has been advised of plans to slash staff by 70-80 percent. The Department of Government Efficiency is reportedly rescinding grants that have already been awarded, thwarting the will of Congress and upending worthwhile projects that improve our lives. It’s yet another authoritarian move to control what people in our country see, say, and think.

Given that this agency’s budget is less than 0.01 percent of the US budget, it’s clearer than ever that the real attack is on ordinary people and our ability to know and understand the world around us. Congress has the power to stop Trump’s power grab and must act to do so.

Faculty at Nevada State University are celebrating today after winning the right to collectively bargain for a safe workplace, for faculty voice in decision-making through shared governance, and to address low and stagnant wages. The American Arbitration Association certified that an overwhelming majority of the roughly 120 faculty voted "yes" in the in-person election that took place April 1-2, by a vote of 104 to 8.

In response to news reports that the Office for Civil Rights in the US Department of Education has requested the names and nationalities of students and faculty who may have been involved in alleged Title VI violations, the AAUP has written to college and university general counsels to clarify that they are under no legal compulsion to comply with such a request. We strongly urge them not to comply, given the serious risks and harms of doing so.