BY MICHEL DEGRAFF Editor’s note: This post was originally published on the afternoon of Friday, January 30, 2026, then unpublished to provide time for AAUP staff to consult about its accordance with an editorial policy that states, “Posts should not focus primarily on specific ongoing disputes involving individuals and their colleges or universities or AAUP…
BY OU-AAUP Two recent incidents put the University of Oklahoma (OU) in the forefront of national and international news. On November 22, ICE detained Vahid Abedini, Professor of Iranian Studies at OU and H-1 B visa holder, as he was boarding his flight from Oklahoma City to attend a conference on Middle Eastern Studies in…
BY DANIEL SEGAL It is the rare faculty member who today is unaware of the significant increase in attacks on speech rights and academic freedom protections on U.S. campuses over the past two years. A recently released joint report from the AAUP and the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) provides an important and illuminating framework…
BY ADAM RZEPKA A large public university is wiping out all of its humanities departments. It isn’t sure why. As I write this, our Interim Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS)—a newly hired computer scientist who will soon be both Interim Dean and Interim Provost—is telling faculty and staff at the…
BY BILL MULLEN Can you identify yourself and explain what happened at Texas State? My name is Tom Alter. Until being recently fired in violation of my free speech rights, I was a tenured associate professor of history at Texas State University in San Marcos, specializing in labor and working class forms of organizing and…
BY AMY HAGOPIAN Public health professionals are charged with responding to humanitarian crises. When hospitals are bombed, when children are deliberately starved, when doctors are assassinated, we’re supposed to speak up. That’s the job. Last week, I was informed my American Public Health Association membership has been revoked, my annual meeting registration cancelled, and I…
The Coalition for Action in Higher Education and AAUP Local 6741 are delighted to announce their Fall 2025 series, “Mapping Anti-Palestinian Discrimination, Harassment, and Misinformation in U.S. Higher Education.” This series of five webinars from October to December brings together educators, activists, and organizations representing them to fight back against the bad-faith misuse of the…
BY LAURA GOLDBLATT, MELISSA LEVY, AND DAN SEGAL With scant exceptions, US colleges and universities have a board of trustees that is the institution’s highest decision-making or governance body. In response to the current widespread assault on academic freedom, rights of speech and assembly on campus, and the role of campus governance, the Academic Council…
BY THE AAUP-PENN EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE We were alarmed to read reports that Penn has been “invited” to sign a so-called “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” by the federal government, and that failing to do so would jeopardize federal funding. When an invitation is accompanied by consequences for not accepting it, it is in fact…
BY THE COALITION FOR ACTION IN HIGHER EDUCATION On Tuesday this week, a subcommittee of the House Education and Workforce Committee held a hearing titled “Unmasking Union Antisemitism.” Subcommittee Chair Rick Allen (R-GA) began the meeting with the following remarks: Today we will hear about how unions like the United Electrical Workers and a United…