Cornell AAUP

What I really want in a lawyer is a bad negotiator

Pentagon to Curb Ties With Top Universities and Think Tanks

White supremacy isn’t going down easy in America.

Pentagon to Curb Ties With Top Universities and Think Tanks www.nytimes.com/2026/02/28/u...

Opinion: No rest for the part-time at CSCU All workers -- including part-timers at CSCU --deserve paid sick days and job security while recovering from illness or a catastrophic personal event.

Every worker deserves paid sick days and guaranteed job security while recovering from illness or a catastrophic personal event. But 58% of @csuaaup.bsky.social courses are taught by part-time workers, who have none of that.

-- Tim Parrish on expanding paid leave benefits to part-time faculty

The rate of destruction of U.S. science is just senseless. It's willful, still senseless.

775 signatures over the past day. Let's make it at least 1000. It's a small thing but it matters. We have to keep pushing for some semblance of accountability. Thanks for the support to those who’ve circulated and signed already

UNC-CH Will ‘Scrap’ New Recording Policy, Chancellor Says The move comes less than three weeks after the controversial rules were enacted.

Congrats to @ncaaup.bsky.social & all who fought against this surveillance policy that would've allowed admin to hijack microphones in the classroom for secret recordings.

This move would've chilled classroom discussion & suppressed students' willingness to ask questions & take intellectual risks.

A line graph showing NSF grant awards made through 2/27/26 for fiscal year 2026 compared with grant awards for fiscal years 2021-2025.

NSF Update (Awards through 2/27/26)

Directorates to follow

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AAUP’s Wolfson and AFT’s Weingarten on the Detainment of Columbia University International Student WASHINGTON—American Association of University Professors President Todd Wolfson and AFT President Randi Weingarten issued the following statement in response to reports that Department of Homeland Sec...

What DHS did at Columbia is outrageous. Universities must not become extensions of immigration enforcement or sites of intimidation. The AAUP & AFT stand with students, faculty and campus communities demanding accountability and the protection of fundamental rights. www.aft.org/press-releas...

Immigration Agents Arrest Student Inside Columbia Building, School Says

NYT: Immigration Agents Arrest Student Inside Columbia Building, School Says

By Sharon Otterman

Claire Shipman, the university’s acting president, said that the federal officials had misrepresented themselves to gain access. GIFT LINK!

BREAKING: Columbia student kidnapped by DHS!
Early this morning, DHS agents entered a Columbia Residential building under the guise of searching for a “missing person” and abducted a student without any intervention. This took place just one day after our ICE off Campus rally. 🧵

@dorfonlaw.bsky.social on why Kansas' new anti-trans law should be tossed out as unconstitutional animus. www.dorfonlaw.org/2026/02/kans...

Update: They passed it. We witnessed and walked out.

UT’s Women's and Gender Studies won a department. Then politics closed in UT faculty say women's and gender studies is a long-established discipline that’s being gutted and defined without their input or voice.

“The level of fear mongering is at a fever pitch,” said Lina-Marie Murillo, a professor in reproductive health. “They’re going to lose a deeply engaged and educated citizenry, but I think that’s what they want.” 💯

www.statesman.com/news/educati...

St. John's University says it no longer recognizes faculty unions after 56 years St. John's University in Queens, New York, notified employees on Feb. 19 that it will no longer recognize the two unions that have represented faculty members at the Catholic university since 1970.

"This shameful attack on the St. John's faculty union betrays the university's history and most deeply-held Catholic values. It's outrageous that religious leaders are joining in the assaults on higher education that are happening nationwide."

— Todd Wolfson, AAUP President

Largest nurses strike in New York City history ends as holdout workers ratify contract The largest nurses strike in New York City history ended this weekend when the last holdout nurses voted to ratify a contract and agreed to return to work.

New York City nurses get a deal, end strike, ratify contract. “The largest nurses strike in New York City history ended this weekend when the last holdouts in the 41-day labor action overwhelmingly voted to ratify a contract and agreed to return to work, officials said." abcnews.com/US/largest-n...

Mr. Schwank was hired as an ICE lawyer in 2021 and became an instructor last year at the federal government’s law enforcement training academy in Georgia, where he taught courses on the law. He resigned on Feb. 13 after he and another publicly unidentified person submitted a confidential whistle-blower complaint on a separate matter that has raised constitutional questions: a new ICE policy allowing deportation officers to enter homes and arrest people without a judicial warrant. “ICE is teaching cadets to violate the Constitution,” he said on Monday at the event with congressional Democrats.

Feel like it should be a big deal that the part of the government that is growing most quickly is teaching its new hires to violate the constitution.
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/u...

Today would be a great day to join @aaup.org and fight to defend our sector from radical right-wing ideology! Join AAUP here: www.aaup.org/join
Sign and share

Our UT colleagues have the same questions we do.

The UT System's New 'Controversial Topics' Policy Is About Policing Knowledge When politically appointed regents and administrators determine which topics are “germane,” academic freedom quietly shifts into political compliance.

“Scholarship that challenges white supremacy, colonialism, or state violence is labeled as divisive. Programs rooted in Indigenous, Latinx, and Black knowledge are consolidated, put under review, or dismantled. The result is not balance—it is containment.“ 🔥

www.texasobserver.org/ut-system-ne...

Academic Freedom and an important favor (it takes five seconds!)

From AAUP NC President Belle Boggs's blog, an explanation of the importance of academic freedom and a call to sign our petition to the UNC BOG not to pass the proposed Code revisions frogtroubletimes.substack.com/p/academic-f...

UT System votes to limit 'controversial topics' in class, raising concerns about academic freedom This is the latest move by the state to have more control over what is taught at public universities.

The University of Texas system has voted to limit 'controversial topics' in class. Where's the academic freedom?

"A faculty member is not going to be able do talk about current events without risking being fired. What kind of education is this?"

—Brian Evans, President of @texasaaup.bsky.social

Cornell's snowy arts quad with a tree silhouetted in the foreground, White Hall in the background, and a colorful sunset framing it all.

February break, so not many people are around Cornell's campus. This is what they missed yesterday.

@cornellaaup.bsky.social

31 Colleges Agree to End Partnerships With PhD Project The resolutions show that Trump’s crackdown on race-based programming isn’t over, despite recent court orders blocking the ED’s anti-DEI guidance.

Cornell appears to be one of the 14 holdouts. Pleasantly surprised by that! www.insidehighered.com/news/governm...

Protect Academic Freedom, Vote No to Revising The Code The UNC System Board of Governors will vote to amend the UNC System Code with new restrictions on academic freedom at its February 26 meeting. The Board of Governors plans to rewrite the very definiti...

URGENT PETITION: As students, parents, alumni, staff, faculty, and community members, we call on the UNC System Board of Governors to protect academic freedom as defined by the 1940 @aaup.org Statement.
BOG: Vote against revisions to Chapter VI of The Code.
actionnetwork.org/petitions/pr...

UT Regents To Vote on Sweeping Course Restrictions FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

🔔PRESS RELEASE: UT System Board of Regents to vote on new course content restrictions just days after UT Austin collapses ethnic and gender studies departments. 👇

aaup-texas.org/blog/f/ut-re...

Trump administration drops appeal of court order blocking $1.2-billion UCLA settlement The Trump administration dropped its appeal of a major higher education case in which a federal judge blocked its $1.2-billion settlement proposal to UCLA over alleged civil rights violations. It will...

Huge win… for UCLA educators and students and elsewhere. It’s important to keep up the fight against this administration’s illegal attempts to censor curriculum and restrict educational opportunity. www.latimes.com/california/s...

As the clock ticks on GETUP-UAW’s strike deadline, administrators are trying to intimidate dep’t chairs into strikebreaking, demanding “continuity plans” for courses. Hundreds of Penn faculty and staff are saying no by signing AAUP-Penn’s no-strikebreaking pledge [1/2]

Every single time a story like this is reported, we must assume that there are many many more that do not.

Within DHS, Noem and Lewandowski frequently berate senior level staff, give polygraph tests to employees they don’t trust and have fired employees—in one incident, Lewandowski fired a U.S. Coast Guard pilot after Noem’s blanket was left behind on a plane, according to people familiar with the incident.

One reason why public servants have for cause job protections is exactly to protect against this: an expert public servant with years of training fired from their job because they failed to satisfy the personal whims of egotists.

There must be a dozen fireable offenses listed in this piece:
*Noem firing civil servants without cause
*Her boyfriend using govt resources to boost her profile, punishing officials who would not give him a gun
*Massive waste on ads, planes, delayed contracts, pushing favored firms