Claremont Colleges Chapter of AAUP

If we get through this, someone should write a casebook based on all the lawsuits filed against the Trump administration, divided up into different areas of law: 1st A, APA, Civil Rights Act, INA, 10th A, NLRA, Just Cause, etc. Would be fascinating.

“There is no state or federal law that prohibits instruction on gender identity in college classes.“ This sentence is essential. They aren’t even bothering to pass laws now. The SB17 law in Texas specifically exempts instruction! They are just making things up and calling it law.

UCs Should Not Release Personal Student and Employee Information In response to news that the University of California administration plans to provide the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights with personally identifiable information of numerous UC f...

The @aaup.org and Council of UC Faculty Associations sent this detailed letter to UCOP President Milliken and UC General Counsel Robinson explaining why they should not release the personally identifiable info of faculty, students, and staff to OCR.

www.aaup.org/news/ucs-sho...

Politicizing Accreditation in the South and Beyond This webinar will explore the historic importance of independent accreditation systems for maintaining professional norms and standards for public higher education and examine the threats a politicize...

WEBINAR ALERT!💻

The AAUP is hosting a webinar exploring the importance of independent accreditation systems for maintaining professional standards & examining threats a politicized accreditation system poses to academic freedom.
▶️October 6, 7PM

“On Friday, a Hays County judge ruled that a fired Texas State University (TXST) professor will be reinstated to his job while his lawsuit against the school proceeds, according to the professor’s attorney.” 👏✊🙌

Local colleges targeted amid growing campus culture wars National media and conservative groups are seeking syllabi and student information from public colleges; professors say they feel targeted and harassed.

A network of right wing “pink slime” faux news sites is targeting “anti-American” classes at colleges & universities nationwide.

#DefendHigherEd

Faculty insert AAUP academic freedom statement into class syllabi Some Columbia professors have inserted a statement supporting academic freedom into their fall 2025 class syllabi in light of the University’s July 23 <a href="https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2...

“Knowledge flourishes when inquiry is free and respectful."

The AAUP supports statements affirming academic freedom in class syllabi!

@aaupcu.bsky.social

#DefendHigherEd #AcademicFreedom

To read the university’s triumphant all-campus email about restored NIH funding, you’d think UC administrators made it happen. But that’s not true. In fact the UC *Faculty Association* organized the lawsuit; administrators kept their heads down and hoped it’d go away.

BREAKING: A federal judge has ordered the University of South Dakota to reinstate a professor who posted criticism of Charlie Kirk on his Facebook page the day of the shooting, finding the action likely violated the First Amendment. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

UT professor says manufactured outrage is killing academic freedom in Texas Enough with the "gotcha" attacks. Let professors teach. Let students learn.

www.expressnews.com/opinion/comm...

New: A&M officials have struggled to detail the exact reasons for Melissa McCoul's termination, citing a technical issue with her course description.

But faculty say the real issue was political pressure over her inclusion of LGBTQ+ themes. www.texastribune.org/2025/09/19/t...

Signs Referencing Climate Change Along with Web Pages Removed from Acadia National Park The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by The Witham Family Hotels Charitable Fund.

The federal government has censored the work of dozens of scientists, including work by my lab, on the impacts of climate change on Acadia National Park. Signs have been removed from Cadillac and Great Meadow. They’re also removing signs about the Wabanaki’s sacred connections to Cadillac.

The ACLU of Indiana filed a federal lawsuit against a state university president, alleging he unconstitutionally fired an employee over her private social media post.

@bsuaaup.bsky.social

#academicfreedom
#academicsky
#freespeech

On Title VI, Discrimination, and Academic Freedom This report considers how Title VI has been used to create an enforcement apparatus that sidesteps long-established AAUP-recommended procedures of shared governance and offers recommendations for facu...

🚨🚨🚨
NEW AAUP Report Analyzes Trump Admin Weaponization of Title VI
to Undermine Civil Rights Protections.

#Academicfreedom
#AcademicSky
#DefendHigherEd

The Firing of Educators Over Kirk Comments Follows a Familiar Playbook

“In some ways, this bears a family resemblance to the Red scare,” Katherine Franke said. “In other ways, this is different…It’s an across-the-board exercise of the whole of government to bully universities, law firms, the media, all of us into a kind of obedience.”

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/22/u...

Claremont Colleges AAUP Chapter will have another open lunch meeting this week!

9/25 (Thursday) at Pomona (Smith Campus Center courtyard)

12pm-1pm.

More information on our website (with links to locations):
sites.google.com/view/7cs-aau...

How a secret recording of a gender identity lecture upended Texas A&M Officials have struggled to detail the exact reasons for the A&M professor’s termination, citing a technical issue with her course description. Faculty say the move was politically motivated.

The new reality that is emerging in Texas is that certain topics or ideas are simply off the table in the classroom.

The censorship of academic speech and entire fields of knowledge in service to an ideology poses an unprecedented danger to the future of higher education.

#AcademicFreedom

Censorship Is the Authoritarian’s Dream The right to free expression must include the right to say horrible and evil things.

"More professors in the United States have been fired for controversial views in the past week than any other week in all of American history."
www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

Under Trump, NSF faces worst crisis in its 75-year history Political directives have undermined agency's independence and record of supporting the best basic research

The plan for NSF is to demote its director to an advisory role to what a former senior figure compared to a Soviet political commissar.

Also, greatly reduce the role of rotators from academic departments to consolidate administration power.

This is a disaster for science and innovation.

Trump administration tries to tamp down panic for high-skill visa holders after last-minute overhaul The president announced Friday that H-1B visas will now come with a $100,000 annual fee, but a U.S. official said it will only apply to new visa applicants.

The Trump administration says that H-1B holders do not have to get back in the country today to avoid their employers paying a $100,000 fee (or just firing them), but I don't know if people will believe it given the Friday night news dump and nobody being willing to go on the record.

I have a ton of work to do but I cannot concentrate at all.

Not everyday you wake up to learn that you cannot leave the country where you live without the risk of not being able to come back to it.

‘It’s a capitulation’: Berkeley grieves as its university bends to Trump Berkeley is in upheaval after Trump turned his attention from East Coast universities to the West.

Berkeley is in upheaval after Trump turned his attention from East Coast universities to the West.

Judith Butler on being denied due process by the U of California, Berkeley, once a bastion of free speech.

You know things are rough when the AAUP's advice on how to use social media is just "set all your accounts to private."

Trump Redirects Millions to Historically Black Colleges, Charter Schools

See the forest. Per new @brookings.edu analysis yesterday, "The Trump administration’s broader economic agenda threatens to drastically reduce the financial capacity of Black students to attend college." www.brookings.edu/articles/the...

A coalition of higher ed unions jointly filed a lawsuit against the Trump admin for the threats to the University of California including @uaw4811.bsky.social @afscme3299.bsky.social @uptecwa.bsky.social @ucaft.bsky.social @teamsterslocal2010.bsky.social @aaup.org @aft.org @uaw.org and CUCFA.

UTLA (United Teachers Los Angeles) seeks a Charter Organizer to be based in Los Angeles, CA. Details can be found at: unionjobs.com/listing.php?... #1u #UnionStrong @utlanow.bsky.social

Groups sue administration over funding freeze at University of California A coalition of groups representing faculty members, students and staff members at UC campuses are challenging frozen federal research funding at UCLA and other federal actions.

Me: “What’s so striking here…is that this is allegedly all about antisemitism, & almost nothing in the demand letter is actually about addressing antisemitism..Nor does it even reference or discuss all the things that universities have done to address alleged antisemitism.”

wapo.st/4ns7UQI

Academic Freedom and the Death of Charlie Kirk The AAUP notes with great alarm the rash of recent administrative actions to discipline faculty, staff, and student speech in the aftermath of the murder of Charlie Kirk.

At a moment when higher education is threatened by forces that seek to destroy it and its role in a democratic society, the anticipatory obedience shown by this rush to judgment must be avoided.

Link to statement here:

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1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure with 1970 Interpretive Comments AAUP 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure

As established in the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom & Tenure, faculty are entitled to hearings under long-standing principles before they may be subject to discipline.

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