Policy Statements

This 2025 statement was formulated in the wake of protests surrounding the war in Gaza to reaffirm more explicitly that institutional neutrality is neither a necessary condition for academic freedom nor categorically incompatible with it.

In response to statewide and congressional assaults on public colleges and universities during the second Trump administration, this 2025 statement encourages AAUP chapters and conferences, unions, and faculty senates across the nation to take concrete actions to ensure their ability to resist.

The statement views the use of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) criteria in faculty recruitment, promotion, and retention within a broad vision of higher education for the public good. Such criteria are one instrument among many that may contribute to evaluating the full range of faculty skills and achievements within a diverse community of students and scholars.

This 2024 statement reconsiders Committee A's prior, categorical opposition to academic boycotts. It maintains that academic boycotts are not in themselves violations of academic freedom and can instead be legitimate tactical responses to conditions that are fundamentally incompatible with the mission of higher education.

This 2024 statement outlines the recent swath of political interference in higher education across the country, beginning with the Trump administration's executive order on divisive concepts. The statement includes steps faculty can take to combat interference and protect academic freedom and university governance and a sample resolution that faculty bodies can adopt to express opposition to restrictive legislation.

This statement, updated in 2024, concerns academic freedom and outside speakers at colleges and universities. Respecting faculty and student choices of invited outside speakers is part of academic freedom and is a best practice that restrains the hands of politically zealous or overly cautious college and university administrators.

This 2022 statement addresses recent partisan efforts in state legislatures to restrict teaching that critically examines the history and policies of the state of Israel and the United States. The statement notes that conservative politicians have justified restrictive legislation on these two topics under the guise of protecting students from harm and urges the protection of academic freedom that is vital to the preservation of democracy.

This 2019 statement—endorsed by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, PEN America, and other organizations—argues for the importance of expert knowledge and the institutions of higher education that produce and transmit it during an ongoing movement in the United States to attack the disciplines and institutions of higher education.

This 2013 statement concerns management of inventions, patents, and other forms of intellectual property in a university setting, which warrants special guidance because it bears on so many aspects of the university’s core missions, values, and functions, including academic freedom, scholarship, research, shared governance, and the transmission and use of academic knowledge by the broader society.