Demands of University Administrators: Recommendations from national AAUP

DEMANDS OF UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATORS

Recommendations from national AAUP

Released March 12, 2025

The AAUP Chapters and their allies should consider using these recommendations to make demands of their campus leaders.  

Higher Ed Leaderships Should Do the Following:

1) Publicly support faculty under attack and affirm their commitment to defending academic freedom defined as the protection of teaching, research, intramural and extramural expressions.

2) Commit not to report on community members–faculty, staff, or students–whose political speech may make them targets for governmental discipline or deportation unless legally mandated or subpoenaed. The safety of and due process for university members cannot be assumed under this federal administration.

​In his second term, President Donald Trump issued executive orders that significantly impact immigrant students in higher education. The Administration is fixating on investigating and potentially deporting international students who participated in anti-war protests and in solidarity with Palestine/Palestinians, raising concerns about free speech and civil rights on campuses. Additionally, the administration rescinded long standing policies that designated schools, including colleges and universities, as “sensitive areas” where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were previously restricted from conducting enforcement actions.

The following resources are designed to assist those in academia make informed decisions regarding the related executive orders. They focus on helping administrators, students, and faculty navigate the legal landscape around the executive orders and how to safely resist their enforcement.

• The Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration FAQs
• American Council on Education Issue Brief 
• National Immigrant Justice Center Resource Page
• Shipman and Goodman LLP FAQsEnforcement Actions
• Center for Constitutional Rights Toolkit
• American Immigration Council Factsheet
• ACLU Call to Action
• AAUP FAQs
• New York City Bar Fact Sheet
• California State University FAQs
• GLSEN Resources for Undocumented People
• UCLA Law Fact Sheet
• Columbia Student Workers UAW 2710 Informational Sheet for International Student Workers

3) Provide immigration support for faculty, staff, and students subject to governmental discipline or deportation. This should include contacts of immigration attorneys and funding to support representation.  Some institutions, including the University of California, have hired an immigration attorney to assist faculty, students, and staff.

4)  Given the federal government’s threat to use AI to identify campus protesters, university administrators must refuse to share data, including photos and video footage, extracted from surveillance of campus protests. In the absence of ongoing litigation or threat of litigation, photos and videos of campus protesters should be deleted and not stored

Incidents of surveillance and monitoring of students and faculty have been long used by university and college leaderships. In recent years, Muslim Americans and anti-war activists have been the central targets of surveillance. Surveillance methods include social media and email monitoring, increased law enforcement presence, video and photo surveillance, AI facial identification, and search warrants. After waves of student encampments occurred on campuses over the past year and a half, administrators and on campus security offices have expanded their surveillance methods, using campus protests as justification. These measures are a direct attack on the constitutional rights of individuals and unnecessarily threaten students and faculty practicing their right to protest. Additionally, information extracted from such measures becomes available to government actors who are able to use these data as justification to impose sanctions. Thus, surveillance and monitoring should be avoided at all times.

Below are compiled resources about surveillance and monitoring on higher ed campuses:

• CAIR Hostile Campuses
• Report a Hostile Campus to CAIR

• CAIR Surveillance Protection at Home 
• CAIR Petition to demand administrators protect academic freedom on campuses
• Surveillance Defense for Campus Protests | Electronic Frontier Foundation

5) Not engage in anticipatory obedience.

Recently, many university and college administrators have engaged in anticipatory obedience, for example, eliminating programs, scrubbing websites, removing particular words or phrases from syllabi, course materials, and course titles and descriptions. Measures of anticipatory obedience are often caused by pressure toward leaders such as trustees, chancellors, and presidents from politicians and donors. These restrictions form a slippery slope for other forms of censorship and control.

In the face of such threats to academic freedom, we have gathered resources on three major topics: the surveillance and monitoring of students, repressive speech and events policies, and scaling back on student services around LGBTQ issues and inclusion.

6) Reaffirm the sufficiency of existing disciplinary processes as well as hiring and promotion criteria, and reject new processes or criteria that bypass democratic shared governance.

7) Refuse overly broad definitions of antisemitism—including the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition. If IHRA has already been adopted, the university should interpret it conservatively. The Jerusalem statement [link below] is useful here.

As of 2016, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) has promoted a working definition of antisemitism that recognizes criticism of Israel as antisemitic. The definition has been adopted by multiple universities and college campuses, and, since Trump’s second presidency, all federal agencies have been required to consider it. IHRA’s definition is designed and has been utilized to silence and censor supporters of Palestine, a repressive mechanism that has become increasingly common within university settings.

Below includes various statements and resources regarding the importance of rejecting this definition:

• #NoIHRA
• #NoIHRA Reporting Form 
• Action Network Statement & Templates to write to Canadian Officials
• JVP IHRA Statement
• ACLU Statement
• Civil Rights Groups Statement
• Bend the Arc Statement
• Palestinian/Israeli Groups Statement

8) Refuse to adopt rules that deem specific language  such as “genocide,” “intifada,” or “from the river to the sea” as per se discriminatory.

Many campuses have also enacted policies that adopt per se rules about certain words and phrases, attributing a determinate meaning to a word (for example, using genocide and settler colonialism as antisemitism) and using such definitions to engage in per se prohibition of words or to adopt other disciplinary measures in connection to their use. These measures violate academic freedom and contradict basic understandings of the use and meaning of language, which is subject to interpretation and contextual. Efforts to produce lists of prohibited words or divisive concepts are contrary to basic commitments to academic freedom and scholarly integrity. Engaging in such repressive speech policies should be avoided.

We have gathered resources related to these issues below:

• AFT Campus Free Speech Resources
• AFT Campus Free Speech FAQ
• AFT Campus Free Speech/Protest FAQ and Resources
• AAUP Statement on Speech/Event Policies and Repression
• Palestine Legal Freedom of Speech Know Your Rights 
• ACLU NC Free Speech Know Your Rights 
• Group Letter/Call to Action on Campus Free Speech by NLG, NSJP, ADC, Pal Legal, US PNC 

9) Stay/Be committed to LGBTQ+ issues and DEI efforts

In his second term, President Donald Trump issued executive orders that significantly impacted LGBTQ+ students and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives in higher education. University and college leaderships have responded cautiously to Trump’s executive orders by reassessing their DEI programs, with some scaling back initiatives to ensure compliance while others seek alternative ways to uphold diversity commitments. The AAUP and others have sued the Trump Administration’s anti-DEI executive orders and argue that Trump’s orders exceed his legal authority and are overly vague.

The following resources are designed to assist those in academia make informed decisions regarding the related executive orders. They focus on assisting administrators in higher education navigate the implications of Trump’s executive orders with some reference to resistance.

• University Business Article Offering Advice for Combating Anti-DEI Attacks
• Point Foundation Resource Guide
• JacksonLewis Executive Order FAQs
• SaulEwing Executive Order FAQs
• AAUP Resource Page

10) Flag and criticize suspect antisemitism accusations that are pretexts for or reflect stereotypical forms of prohibited discrimination (including anti-Black, anti-Palestinian/Muslim/Arab, anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination, etc.)

11) Reaffirm the importance of democratic shared governance and respect democratic governance processes, including senate resolutions that protect unpopular teaching and research as well as controversial speech and expressive activity and otherwise

12) Commit to ensuring that internal grievance/complaint procedures (especially those based on Title VI) include adequate procedural safeguards.  For example, people should not be locked out of their campus housing while being subject to an investigation