MIT AAUP’s Response to the Attacks on Higher Education
The AAUP Executive CommitteeAmerican higher education is under attack by the Trump administration. Faculty, postdocs, students, and staff are hurting. Labs are at risk of closing. Research is grinding to a halt. Jobs are not being renewed. MIT faculty are foregoing travel to international conferences for fear of not being able to re-enter the country. The top-performing international students, with outstanding academic potential, are choosing to go elsewhere. Students are considering whether to “self-deport” or face the possibility of detention or deportation.
To confront these ongoing challenges and shape a better future, we need to work together, across universities, to block the erosion of academic freedom, cuts to vital research, threats against and deportation of international scholars, and reinforce the value of a well-informed populace.
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) is leading an effort to build resistance. Since 1915, AAUP’s core mission has been:
to advance academic freedom and shared governance; to define fundamental professional values and standards for higher education; to promote the economic security of faculty, academic professionals, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and all those engaged in teaching and research in higher education; to help the higher education community organize to make our goals a reality; and to ensure higher education’s contribution to the common good.[1]
The modern conception of tenure in the United States emerged and was secured through the work of the AAUP.[2] Currently, the AAUP has chapters at over 500 colleges and universities across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the US Virgin Islands. Last summer, MIT renewed its AAUP Chapter.[3] It is our intention that, in keeping with the mission of the National AAUP, the chapter, “is for faculty of all political orientations who believe in academic freedom, shared governance, economic security, and the contributions of higher education to the common good.”[4]
The National AAUP has been actively engaged in pushing back against the recent attacks on higher education. For example,
- Together with the Harvard AAUP chapter, the AAUP has sued “to block the Trump administration from demanding that Harvard University restrict speech and restructure its core operations or else face the cancellation of $8.7 billion in federal funding for the university and its affiliated hospitals.”[1]
- The AAUP has sued “to block the Trump administration from carrying out large-scale arrests, detentions, and deportations of noncitizen students and faculty members who participate in pro-Palestinian protests and other protected First Amendment activities” with chapters at Harvard, Rutgers, and NYU, and the Middle East Studies Association.[2] The MIT AAUP Chapter joined an Amicus Brief in support of this suit.[3]
- And, on behalf of its members, the AAUP has sued the administration for “unlawfully cutting off $400 million in federal funding for crucial public health research in an attempt to force Columbia University to surrender its academic independence.”[4]
- Together with a number of other academic organizations, the AAUP planned a Day of Action for Higher Ed on April 17 to build support for academic freedom and to energize resistance to Trump’s attacks.[5]
As part of this national Day of Action, the MIT chapter hosted three panels, tabled in the Infinite Corridor, and held an inaugural walk for academic freedom. (Details can be found on our website: https://aaup.mit.edu/164-2/.) Close to two dozen participants on the educational walking tour visited sites on campus that mark the ongoing struggle for academic freedom. For example, Salvador Luria, a biologist at MIT, won the Nobel Prize for his work on bacteriophages and was instrumental in forming MIT’s Center for Cancer Research.[6] However, he was also opposed to McCarthyism and the Vietnam war; he protested nuclear weapon testing and supported organized labor.[7] Just after winning the Nobel Prize, he was blacklisted by the NIH. The auditorium on the first floor of building 76 is named after him. We plan to develop this walk further and hold it regularly so that our community can learn about (and from) our own history of challenges to academic freedom. A more recent event to include was the planned, then cancelled, visit to MIT by Dorian Abbott to give the 2020 John Carlson Lecture in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. The decision to cancel Abbott’s lecture catalyzed broad conversations about academic freedom, leading the faculty to adopt a formal university statement on freedom of expression. Do you know of other examples to include? Let us know: aaup-info@mit.edu.
The MIT Chapter of the AAUP has offered workshops on digital security and has co-sponsored workshops on digital security with DUSP and “know your rights” workshops with the MIT Graduate Student Union (GSU). We also assisted the GSU in developing a list of actions to be undertaken to secure the safety of international students. Recently we co-sponsored a panel, “Defending Academic Freedom and Students Rights & Responsibilities in Response to U.S. Dept. of Education Initiatives and Immigration Policies and Procedures,” with the GSU and the ACLU.
Given that successful resistance to federal attacks will require a broad and sustained effort, the MIT Chapter is also working with other chapters, both regionally and nationally, to organize events that build a broad and politically diverse coalition to defend higher education. We urge any professors, lecturers, researchers or teaching staff at MIT to join us. Your dues support the national AAUP’s efforts. If you have questions, please visit our website (http://aaup.mit.edu), the national website (http://aaup.org), or reach out to us at aaup-info@mit.edu. You can express interest in our work here: https://tinyurl.com/mitaaup.
The AAUP Executive Committee
Sally Haslanger
Erica James
Eric Robsky Huntley
Marzyeh Ghassemi
[3] https://www.aaup.org/sites/default/files/Faculty_Association_Amicus_Brief.pdf
[5] https://www.dayofactionforhighered.org/
[6] https://biology.mit.edu/news/untidy-experiment-catalyzed-recombinant-dna-tech/
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Luria
[1] https://www.aaup.org/about/mission-1
[2] https://www.aaup.org/issues/tenure
[3]https://fnl.mit.edu/september-october-2024/mits-new-chapter-of-the-american-association-of-university-professors-aaup/
