2025 AAUP Updates

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.

Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure reinforces the AAUP’s March 14 statement and highlights the specific dangers to academic freedom and shared governance in the Trump administration’s demand that the Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department at Columbia University be placed into receivership and that drastic changes should be made to student discipline, admissions, and other processes.

Like so many recent actions, this is the move of an authoritarian, and shows the Trump administration’s fundamental disregard for working people. It is also a blatantly retaliatory move, against federal workers and against unions, which have led the opposition to defend our communities and defeat the Project 2025 agenda.

Apparently, President Trump believes his job to be stripping rights from workers and students, persecuting immigrants, muzzling critics, and handing the governance of our country over to his billionaire cronies.

We know what our job is: to defend our campuses and communities and to protect freedom of speech and academic freedom, research that saves lives, and the institutions that provide crucial services that benefit every person residing in the US.

After months of delays, negotiations, and one-on-one engagement, faculty at Ohio University won a decisive victory on Monday as an overwhelming majority voted YES to being represented in collective bargaining by the United Academics of Ohio University, AAUP/AFT.

The AAUP and the AFT today sued the Trump administration on behalf of our members for unlawfully cutting off $400 million in federal funding for crucial public health research in an attempt to force Columbia University to surrender its academic independence. While the Trump administration has been slashing funding since its first days in office, this move represents a stunning new tactic: using cuts as a cudgel to coerce a private institution to adopt restrictive speech codes and allow government control over teaching and learning

The national AAUP; chapters at Harvard, Rutgers, and NYU; and the Middle East Studies Association today filed a lawsuit seeking to block the Trump administration from carrying out large-scale arrests, detentions, and deportations of noncitizen students and faculty members who participate in pro-Palestinian protests and other protected First Amendment activities.

Today, the AAUP and a coalition including educators, school districts, and unions filed a legal action against the Trump administration to stop the dismantling of the Department of Education and mass firings that will decimate the crucial services the department provides to every American. This lawsuit is the first filed since President Trump’s executive order attempting to shutter the department.