Free Higher Ed Now! April 17: A Day of Action for the Common Good
You may read our statement here and endorse it at the bottom of this page.
As campus workers and citizens, educators and researchers, staff, students, and university community members, we exercise a powerful collective voice in advancing the democratic mission of our colleges and universities. It is our labor and our ideas which sustain higher education as a project that preserves and extends social equality and the common good—as a project of social emancipation.
On April 17, 2025, we will hold a one-day action on and around our campuses to renew this vision of higher education as an autonomous public good, and university workers as its most important resource.
Free Higher Ed Now! will demand FIRST that public higher education in the U.S. be fully funded, politically independent, and FREE to all students and SECOND that higher ed be FREE of political inference that reduces the rights and autonomy of campus workers and students to teach, study, learn, speak, organize, and dissent.
WHY WE MUST ACT
Today, public education at all levels is under attack. Politicians and right-wing organizations are pushing educational gag orders that prohibit the teaching of subjects, concepts and books in both higher education and K-12 schools. They are rolling back historic advancements in diversity, equity, and inclusion. The majority of jobs in higher education are now low-paying, part-time and precarious, rendering academic freedom and shared governance increasingly hollow. Students bear a crushing debt load that limits their future for decades.
We stand against all these antidemocratic pressures in all their guises and on all educational levels.
On April 17, 2025, we will fight back.
DAY OF ACTION NATIONAL AGENDA
We invite all campus workers, workers in K-12 and higher education, students, social justice organizations, activists, rank-and-file workers and parents to join our day of action to press these demands:
We Take Action to Defend Worker Autonomy. Those who work at universities are best able to make decisions about the form and function of higher education present and future.
We Take Action for the Freedom to Teach and Learn. We defend the right of teachers to teach, students to learn, and the value of higher education as a collective, non-privatized public resource.
We Take Action to Defend the Value of Dissent We affirm the right of every student, teacher, worker, and community member to assemble, protest and speak out on issues of social justice, including Palestine and divestment; the study of and advocacy for race, gender, and sexuality; diversity and equality; and LGBTQ rights.
We Take Action for Wall-to-Wall Unionization in Higher Ed. We fight for wall-to-wall unionization in higher education that increases wages, job security and solidarity for all campus workers.
We Take Action for Education As a Civil Right. We call for unconditional full public funding for higher education, the elimination of all student debt, and legislation and social provisioning that will guarantee every student access to college education as a civil right, and full protections for migrant, immigrant and international students and campus workers in the U.S.
We Take Action in Recognition of the Power of the Strike. When higher education workers strike, as we have done at Rutgers, in the UC system, and at dozens of other colleges and universities over the last several years, we can win transformative changes in our working conditions and our students’ learning conditions.
In solidarity,
Coalition for Action in Higher Education (CAHE)
American Association of University Professors
Higher Education Labor United
American Association of University Professor Local 6741
Debt Collective
For questions or to find out more about getting involved in the Day of Action write to DayOfAction@proton.me.
