Today, the AAUP & @aft.org launched our national policy platform to win back an American higher education system that protects the freedom to teach & learn & strengthens our democracy.
Read it in full here:
www.aaup.org/blueprint-st...
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“They tried to weaken higher education, but instead they built a movement to fight for the future...
They can attack our institutions, but they cannot stop our movement….We will not stop until we have the higher education system and the democracy we all deserve.”
— Todd Wolfson, AAUP President
This was a fantastic launch for @aft.org @aaup.org and @afthighered.bsky.social in Austin with Texas AFT-AAUP! LFG. College4All
Great to have @rweingarten.bsky.social and @proftwolf.bsky.social in Austin for the launch of AAUP/AFT’s new platform! Pictured here with Texas AFT’s @zephcapo.bsky.social (left) and @drleonardbright.bsky.social of the @tamu-aaup.bsky.social
RIGHT NOW: UT Austin professors & students are marching to the Texas Capitol to demand an end to classroom censorship & course consolidation.
@aft.org
@texasaaup.bsky.social
@utaustinaaup.bsky.social
Stop the ban, keep up the fight. Education is a right!
🎓 @aaup.org @afthighered.bsky.social @texasaaup.bsky.social
Faculty stand and sit wearing sunglasses and hats on the grounds of the Texas Capitol.
Faculty, students and staff gather at the Texas Capitol to fight to protect higher education in Texas. We won’t stop fighting, says UT undergrad and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies student Sofia Gomez!
@aaup.org
@aft.org
@utaustinaaup.bsky.social
Higher ed is on the move!
AFT and @aaup.org are marching from the University of Texas-Austin to the state capital to tell lawmakers: Stop using higher ed as a political pawn. Invest in our colleges and universities and make opportunities for all!
AAUP & AFT leaders at the Texas AFL-CIO office in Austin, Texas
We launched this platform in the heart of Texas as a reminder: even at ground zero of the attacks on academic freedom & education as a whole, there is a growing resistance movement that is spreading like wildfire fire.
And we will win.
“With this platform, the AAUP & AFT have crystallized the fight for higher education as a fight for the soul of our democracy,” said Todd Wolfson, AAUP President.
“We are building a movement to transform campuses back into engines of public progress, free inquiry, innovation, & knowledge.”
We’re calling on local, state & federal candidates & elected officials to endorse this platform & commit to making higher education a central issue in the 2026 midterm elections.
Our democracy depends on it.
Today, the AAUP & @aft.org launched our national policy platform to win back an American higher education system that protects the freedom to teach & learn & strengthens our democracy.
Read it in full here:
www.aaup.org/blueprint-st...
🧵
@rweingarten.bsky.social: If we're not teaching kids the "how" and "why," and not teaching them how to think critically, we're not doing our job. We have a moral responsibility to do this - and we're seeing autocrats and billionaires stripping higher education because they don't want that.
Dr. Leonard Bright, Texas A&M AAUP: Higher education is not a luxury - it's a public good. Higher ed exists to advance knowledge. But our courses are being scrutinized & altered because of a small group of political actors. @texasaaup.bsky.social @aaup.org @afthighered.bsky.social
Dr. Bright (cont): My course was cancelled because I refused to confine discussions of race, sexuality, and other topics to one single reading or single day of instruction. This is a real threat. We can't leave our students underprepared. @texasaaup.bsky.social @aaup.org @afthighered.bsky.social
@ginafortexas.bsky.social: Our colleges & universities are our best hope for our young people to provide economic opportunities & shape participating citizens in our state. And yet, Governor Abbott is hijacking our colleges to play out culture wars. @afthighered.bsky.social @aaup.org
Right, @repcasar.bsky.social. In states like TX, you have extremist politicians trying to control what's being taught in the classroom while making college less affordable and accessible to working class students. With one voice, we say: Enough. @aaup.org @afthighered.bsky.social
The new platform from AFT & @aaup.org is focused on:
🎓Restored funding
🎓Freedom to learn
🎓Shared governance: Ensuring faculty and staff—not corporate administrators—make final decisions on curriculum, research priorities and institutional priorities.
🎓Labor reform
Read this op-ed from the @miamiherald.com on growing threats to academic freedom, including the sidelining of sociology in Florida’s universities www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-e...
#UFFFSU #HigherEd #FloridaNews #AcademicSky #FSU
HAPPENING NOW: The AFT and @aaup.org are in Texas launching our new Nnational Higher Education platform ahead of the 2026 midterms.
Read more in the release here, and follow along in the thread below. @afthighered.bsky.social
🔔Lilia Rosas, Latino/a Studies prof, “If you think ethnic studies and women’s and gender and sexuality studies are the only programs to go, pay attention…This university is reinventing itself around a lens less committed to knowledge-making.” ⬇️
thebarbedwire.com/2026/04/13/a...
The university administration has begun an ideological crackdown in the vein of "divisive concepts" laws at the unit with the weakest governance and academic freedom protections—the Lab School. Read our full statement here: www.uchicagoaaup.org/statements/l...
HB 580 in Alabama will create post-tenure review process for faculty, let Board of Trustees shape curricula & limit the power of faculty senates.
“The bottom line is that it’s a bad bill. It will do little to bring about the transparency & accountability that lawmakers desire.”
—Auburn AAUP
Big news out of Maryland!
Beginning July 1st, thousands of non-tenure-track faculty in Maryland will have collective bargaining rights.
www.aaup.org/news/collect...
Huge thanks to @aaup.org, @aft.org, & @aftmaryland.bsky.social for helping us pass this historic legislation!
✴️✴️✴️TODAY! JOIN US IN THE FIGHT! ✊🏽✊🏽✊🏽
The Trump admin’s rewriting of rules governing college accreditation “obliterates” autonomy & is is being described as “a cluster bomb being dropped on American higher education.”
See also the University of North Carolina's right-wing funded "School of Civic Life and Leadership" which was already mired in controversy as soon as it was created.
www.wral.com/news/educati...
Nothing in Rufo’s record indicates he’s qualified to speak about the state of higher education. He’s done no academic research and admitted that his crusade against critical race theory relied upon misrepresentation. Even Republican allies view Rufo’s trusteeship at Florida’s New College as an unmitigated disaster, complete with faculty purges, an ousted president, a grossly ballooning budget and a significant drop in the U.S. News & World Report’s rankings. Despite his record of failure, my university’s new center paid him more for his hour of propaganda than most University of Iowa graduate students make in a year as teaching assistants.
The inaugural speaker for the center's opening event was the unqualified hack Christopher Rufo. Rufo's goal is destroying, not expanding, intellectual freedom and he's open about it. Asking him to speak at this event is inviting the arsonist to come marvel at the fire.
“If this policy stands, politicians & the monied interests who support them will have effectively taken over the curriculum of our institutions in the TTU System, whose credibility will be indefinitely and irreversibly harmed.”
— Andrew Martin, Texas Tech AAUP Chapter President
Let's not forget that Rufo's pernicious influence is also evident in the Florida-led push to replace independent accreditation with state control through the CPHE. And that the UNC System Office is fully complicit in this project.
