Here’s our monthly digest of updates and resources. We we hope to see you at our member meeting on August 7!

Upcoming Events: Security Training, AAUP Member Meeting, AI Virtual Discussion

• Thursday, July 31, 10–11 a.m. ET/7–8 a.m. PT: Travel Safety and Security Training
  Are you currently overseas and traveling back to the United States later this summer? The AFT is offering a one-hour information session tomorrow with the Democracy Security Project on how you should mitigate both cyber and physical vulnerabilities while traveling. Register here.
• Thursday, August 7, 7–8 p.m. ET/4–5 p.m. PT: AAUP Member Meeting
  We’ll update you on recent developments and discuss fall plans. Register here.
• Wednesday, August 27, 4–5 p.m. ET/1–2 p.m. PT: AAUP AI Report Virtual Discussion.
  Join members of the AAUP’s ad hoc Committee on Artificial Intelligence and Academic Professions for a discussion of ed-tech, including artificial intelligence (AI), as it continues to become more integrated into teaching and research in higher education. Registration will be sent by email.

Read on to see events sponsored by the Center for Academic Freedom and find all events on our website.

An Energizing Summer Institute in Atlanta

Hundreds of AAUP and AFT members, organizers, and staff poured into Atlanta’s Morehouse College from July 17–20 for this year’s AFT-AAUP Summer Institute, our largest organizing training. In addition to an Organize Every Campus training, workshops during the four-day event covered building a contract campaign, defending immigrant rights, financial analysis of college budgets, building equity and solidarity, and developing union leaders. It was incredible to gather at Morehouse, a historic HBCU, and hear from leaders across the country. Thank you to all who made this such a successful and energizing Summer Institute!

Photos from the Organize Every Campus preconference training are now available on the AAUP‘s Flickr page. Check back in August for a full album of photos from the 2025 AAUP-AFT Summer Institute.

DOJ investigation at George Mason an Attack on Academic Freedom

On July 25, the US Department of Justice Civil Rights Division sent a letter launching an investigation into the George Mason University Faculty Senate because faculty members passed a resolution of support for their university president, Gregory Washington, the first Black president of Virginia’s largest public university.

This marks the fifth federal inquiry into George Mason in as many weeks. It follows a clear pattern of escalating, coordinated attacks on the university’s leadership—attacks that originate in the political offices of Richmond and echo all the way to Washington, DC. Read the full statement from AAUP president Todd Wolfson here.

Legal Update: Columbia, Harvard and AAUP v. Rubio

AAUP President Todd Wolfson called the Columbia University Board of Trustees’ concessions to the Trump administration “a disaster for Columbia students, faculty, and staff, as well as for academic freedom, freedom of speech, and the independence of colleges and universities nationwide. Never in the history of our nation has an educational institution so thoroughly bent to the will of an autocrat. The settlement will only fuel Trump’s authoritarian appetite to control other democratic institutions that could potentially rein him in. This settlement subverts our democracy and capitulates to the Trump plan to target the pillars of our democracy: the judiciary, the free press, and our education systems.” Read more here.

On July 21, 2025, the United States district court in Massachusetts held a hearing on a lawsuit filed by the AAUP and our Harvard chapter, and later joined by the Harvard administration, seeking to block the Trump administration from demanding that Harvard University restrict speech or face the cancellation of $8.7 billion in federal funding for the university and its affiliated hospitals. The court told the government, “It’s a little bit mind-boggling. You’re saying that they can terminate the contracts if the executive branch doesn’t agree with the viewpoint being espoused by the college.” The court was similarly skeptical when the government switched gears and argued that it was fighting antisemitism when it demanded things like “viewpoint diversity” and “reducing the power held by students and untenured faculty.” The court is expected to issue a written decision within the month.

On the same day in the courtroom next door, the court heard closing arguments in AAUP v. Rubio, the case seeking to put a stop to the administration’s policy of deporting students and faculty for pro-Palestinian speech. The court had emphasized that the First Amendment protected political speech that was critical of Israel; at trial, government officials claimed that speech opposing arms shipments to Israel or criticizing the state of Israel could be considered antisemitic and a basis for revoking visas. In closing arguments, attorneys from the Knight First Amendment Institute, representing the AAUP, forcefully argued that revoking visas and deporting students and faculty for political speech was a blatant violation of the First Amendment. The court is expected to issue a decision in this case in late August or September.

Two New Reports on AI and Community College Governance

The AAUP released a new report, Artificial Intelligence and the Academic Professions, sharing survey findings and calling for the establishment of policies in colleges and universities that prioritize economic security, faculty working conditions, and student learning conditions as advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) technologies accelerate.

Save the date: Wednesday, August 27, at 4 p.m. Eastern time, we will host a virtual discussion about the issues surfaced by the survey, resources and recommendations, and what’s happening on your campus.

We also 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 focusing on community college shared governance provides information about what practices prevail nationally across twenty-six areas of institutional decision-making and how they compare with normative standards of academic governance in community colleges, filling an important and often overlooked void in the higher education governance literature.

2024–25 Faculty Compensation Survey Dataset Available

The final dataset for the 2024–25 AAUP Faculty Compensation Survey is available to order now. The final dataset includes data submitted or revised by July 16, 2025. AAUP chapter leaders, AAUP state conference officers, and AFT local or state federation presidents may order the dataset free of charge to conduct chapter business, and institutions may purchase data products for a fee. Here are other ways to explore Faculty Compensation Survey data:

• The AAUP’s interactive data website provides tools for exploring Faculty Compensation Survey and federal data going back to 2002 and includes drilldown capabilities for summarizing data by institution, region, state, Carnegie Basic Classification, and other variables.
• Summary tables and explanation of statistical data (survey methodology) were published at https://www.aaup.org/our-work/research/FCS, along with institution-level appendixes to accompany the Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, 2024–25, which was published online in June and will be printed in August in the summer issue of Academe.

For questions about the Faculty Compensation Survey, please contact the Department of Research and Public Policy at aaupfcs@aaup.org.

In Case You Missed It: Forced Resignation at University of Virginia

In a statement earlier this month about the departure of James Ryan from the University of Virginia, AAUP president Todd Wolfson said, “At its core, the forced resignation of University of Virginia President James Ryan is an assault on a higher education system accessible to all, and thus on democracy itself. Ryan’s alleged crime of fostering an inclusive, diverse campus environment at UVa that meets the needs of Virginia students should be lauded.”

Please Update your .EDU email to a Personal Email

If you received this email at an address ending in .edu or .gov, please log into our member portal and change your preferred email to a personal address. This enhances the privacy of AAUP emails and helps avoid restrictions that may be associated with work email addresses. Detailed instructions are below.

How to update your email in our system:

1. Go to https://members.aaup.org/s/login/.
2. Login with your email (the email where you receive AAUP communications) and password.
3. You can click “Forgot Password” to reset it if necessary.
4. Once you’re logged in, scroll down to the second header “Communication Information.”
5. Click Change (in red on the right of the screen).
6. Add your personal email.
7. Select “Personal” under Preferred Email Type.
8. Click the yellow save button at the bottom of the “Communications Information” section.

If you have any trouble resetting your email, contact membershipservices@aaup.org.

AAUP’s Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom (CDAF) Resources and Workshops

• Check out our new resources, including an Academic Freedom First Aid Kit, which offers critical guidance for quick response when under attack.
• CDAF has also created Academic Freedom Syllabus materials. This includes introductory syllabus language highlighting classroom expectations on academic freedom, as well as a curricular module for class discussion on the value of academic freedom.
• Wednesday, August 20, 3:00–4:15 pm ET/noon–1:15 p.m. PT: Register for a webinar workshop to explore these syllabus materials and how to use them. Join Isaac Kamola, director of the AAUP‘s Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom, for an overview of teaching resources, sample syllabus language, and a module that can be incorporated into a graduate seminar, undergraduate class, professional development course, new faculty orientation, or campus discussion group.
• Wednesday, September 24, 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT: Join us for “Forgotten Pasts and Alternative Futures: Indigenous Nations and Higher Education,” the second in a series of virtual panel discussions cosponsored by Scholars for a New Deal for Higher Education, Critical Legal Collective, and the AAUP’s Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom. The conversation will be moderated by Jeremiah Chin, professor of law at the University of Washington, and will explore how Indigenous nations can provide a source of counter-sovereignty for functions of educational governance historically overseen by the federal government.
• Listen to the most recent episode of the AAUP Presents special series of podcasts “Academic Freedom on the Line.” In this episode on science funding, CDAF fellow and host Vineeta Singh explores the landscape of federal research funding and what cuts could mean for the future of research in the United States. She’s joined by guests Mary Feeney—Frank and June Sackton Chair and Professor in the School of Public Affairs at Arizona State University and Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration—,and Ethan Prall, an environmental legal scholar and scientist, a Harvard Law School grad, and currently an Abess Fellow, Society of Conservation Biology Graduate Student Fellow, and doctoral candidate in environmental science and policy at the University of Miami. All episodes of AAUP Presents can be found on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and our website.
• Read more about other CDAF events, tools, and publications, as well as other current threats to academic freedom on our weekly Substack newsletter.

Media Clips:

• “People are terrified of the onslaught of uncritical AI narratives and partnerships across many sectors, and what it means for the future…But in talking with higher education workers across the country, we on the committee have seen that AI in higher education is barely even functional and tech companies view higher education as a cash cow to exploit.”—Britt Paris, Rutgers AAUP-AFT member and coauthor of the AAUP report, Artificial Intelligence and the Academic Professions” interviewed by Inside Higher Education
• “Let’s be clear: This campaign against George Mason and its president isn’t about antisemitism or so-called reverse racism. It’s about political control—plain and simple. The MAGA movement and its allies aim to seize control of public higher education in Virginia, using board appointments, fabricated grievances, and orchestrated media smears to intimidate faculty, silence students, and remake universities in their ideological image. They don’t want independent thought–they seek obedience.” —Bethany Letiecq (AAUP George Mason University Chapter President), Tim Gibson (AAUP Virginia Conference President), and James H. Finkelstein, in an op-ed in the Chronicle of Higher Education
• ”The view of the AAUP and the Middle East Studies Association’s, was that these arrests and detentions and threatened deportations are causing harm not only to, most obviously, the students who are being detained and threatened with deportation, but to the larger academic community, as well, because students and faculty all over the country are quite literally terrified that their advocacy and expression will lead to detention…And the result is that there is this climate of fear and repression on college campuses across the country. – Jameel Jaffer, Director of the Knight First Amendment Institute, on the AAUP v. Rubio trial, interviewed by Democracy Now
  
• “Universities, as they make concessions, do not stop the demand for future concessions…They just open the door for more.”—David A. Bateman, President of Cornell AAUP, interviewed by The New York Times
• “What should have happened is that a committee of faculty members whose job is to actually hear my case and decide whether or not there’s a legitimate case and whether I should be investigated, punished or acquitted based on the complaint. That should have been the first thing that happened. It would have been transparent. It would have been following the faculty handbook, which are rules that were outlined by the American Association of University Professors. —Dr. Maura Finkelstein discussing her termination from Muhlenberg College with Chris Hedges
• “The Columbia settlement is a disaster for higher education.It’s an act of cowardice by the leadership of Columbia and bullying and weaponization of antisemitism for nefarious purposes by the Trump administration.”—Todd Wolfson, AAUP President, quoted in The Hill
• “Allowing the government to infringe upon, monitor, and ultimately make decisions about the hiring of faculty and admission of students is a stunning breach of the independence of colleges and universities and opens the door for the ideological control this administration so eagerly craves.”—Todd Wolfson quoted in Politico.