BY AARON NISENSON The Trump administration has successfully buried a key component of the Columbia settlement agreement. The focus on monetary damages paid by the university and restrictions on campus protests and diversity policies obscures the Trump administration’s imposition of the right to interfere directly in university admissions, hiring, and promotion decisions. The Trump administration…
BY THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY CHAPTER OF THE AAUP The Agreement between the federal government and Columbia University announced on July 24, 2025, has been presented as a settlement of Title VI violations, specifically the university’s alleged failure to curtail bias and harassment directed toward Jewish faculty, staff, and students. However, as has been pointed out by…
BY AUDREY BERLOWITZ The recent announcement of the founding of the Commission for Public Higher Education (CPHE) reveals another “axis of power” in the multiwebbed right-wing war on the US university. Though the new body entails only the seven southern public university systems of Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas A & M,…
BY BRITT S. PARIS, LINDSAY WEINBERG, AND EMMA MAY Tomorrow, July 23, the Trump administration plans to release an “AI action plan” that reflects the White House’s priorities for expanding the artificial intelligence industry. It builds on one of the first directives from the second Trump administration, Executive Order (EO) 14179, “Removing Barriers to American…
BY AN ANONYMOUS IRANIAN STUDENT On June 4, 2025, the Trump administration issued a proclamation that restricts or denies entry to the United States of foreign nationals from a list of specific countries, including Iran. In the weeks since then, the AAUP has received numerous emails from current and prospective students affected by the travel…
BY JENNIFER LUNDQUIST AND THE STAND TOGETHER FOR HIGHER ED LEADERSHIP TEAM I, along with the undersigned leaders of Stand Together for Higher Ed, a national faculty-led movement to defend US higher education, are deeply concerned by reports that Harvard University is engaged in negotiations with the Trump administration to settle ongoing legal disputes. While…
BY GLENN COLBY Today the AAUP released a report on data collected from the 2024 AAUP Community College Shared Governance Survey, conducted in partnership with the Center for the Study of Community Colleges. This first-of-its-kind survey of community college shared governance provides information about what practices prevail nationally across twenty-six areas of institutional decision-making and how they…
On July 15, 2025, City University of New York Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez, Robert M. Groves, Interim President of Georgetown University, and Rich Lyons, Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley testified before the House Committee on Education and Workforce at a hearing on “Antisemitism in Higher Education: Examining the Role of Faculty, Funding,…
BY MADELINE ROWE Madeline Rowe, a PhD candidate at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities, is conducting a dissertation research study on how early career faculty members (tenure-track, but not yet tenured) perceive academic freedom in their teaching. Current faculty members of any rank and teaching in any discipline are invited to complete a brief survey…
BY JOAN W. SCOTT I was deeply disturbed to see this recent e-mailing from some 27 historians, 12 of whom are former presidents of the American Historical Association (AHA), urging members to vote for the slate proposed by the association’s Nominating Committee. To Members of the LAWCHA listserve, We write to ask those of you…