Faculty Rally Nationwide for Free Speech, Free Tuition, and to Free Detained Students

Faculty-student pairs set up “anti-fascist office hours” at three locations on the Northwestern University campus.

Faculty, students, and staff created anti-fascist art at the University of Hawaii.

American Association of University Professors members combined membership drives with tabling about the critical issues facing higher education on 30 campuses.

And in New York City, 4,000 people rallied to defend higher education from Trump’s attacks, chanting, “ICE took our students, we want them back!”

These were a few of the 170 events on campuses across the country April 17 in the second annual Coalition for Action in Higher Education day of action, organized under the banner of “Free Higher Education.”

That meant not only fully funded and free to students, but also free of “political interference that reduces the rights and autonomy of campus workers and students to teach, study, learn, speak, and dissent.”

The coalition includes the AAUP, Higher Education Labor United, the Debt Collective, Faculty for Justice in Palestine, and AFT-Oregon, among other organizations.

CAHE emerged more than a year ago in response to the attacks, under the Biden administration, on the leadership of the University of Pennsylvania and other universities, when administrators were hauled in front of Congress to defend themselves against accusations of campus anti-Semitism stemming from student protests against the genocide in Palestine.

The initial organizers, a loose group of people who knew each other through the AAUP and as colleagues, planned the first day of action for April 17, 2024. That also happened to be the first day on the Columbia University encampment.

EXPANSIVE THEMES

One year later, under Trump, campuses are facing abduction and disappearing of students from other countries living and studying here; cancellation of student visas; threats to cut funds if diversity, equity, and inclusion programs are not eliminated; bad-faith allegations of anti-Semitism deployed to silence students, faculty, and staff; and cuts to research programs.

While some universities are fighting back and refusing to comply with Trump’s demands, others have buckled and are scrubbing scholarship and cutting programs.

This dizzying array of assaults is designed to stun—to cause a certain paralysis. With so much going on, where does an organizer start? And how do we avoid being divided and ineffective as different campuses feel the impact of these assaults differently?

Faculty, students, and community are answering these questions with actions that say: we start right here, where we are, and we connect all the issues.

“The tagline ‘free higher education’ speaks to a range of concerns and demands,” said Heather Ferguson, who teaches at the Claremont Consortium and is on the executive committee of AAUP Local 6741, “and allows groups or chapters to put forward their own issues, with the idea to grow power in their institutions that is flexible.

‘ARE WE COOKED?’

Local events included union drives, teach-ins about university finances and decision-making, workshops on protecting immigrant rights and academic freedom, and watch parties for the documentary film “The Palestine Exception,” about the history of censoring discussions of Israel and Palestine.

On the campus of Florida International University, faculty and students gathered to talk. “We talked about what is going on that we need to address: what should we do?” said Katie Rainwater, membership chair of the United Faculty of Florida. “It was an open discussion—anyone could speak. And then we talked about what kind of organization do we need to have a campus-wide collaboration?”

Campus police there had just signed a cooperation agreement with ICE; faculty members and students protested earlier in the week at the Board of Trustees meeting. After the day of action, the faculty senate passed a resolution condemning the police cooperation with ICE.

At Northwestern, Stephanie Knezz, a professor of instruction in chemistry, joined a student to hold “anti-fascist office hours” on the part of the campus that houses the science and mathematics program.

SUPPORT LABOR NOTES

BECOME A MONTHLY DONOR

Give $10 a month or more and get our "Fight the Boss, Build the Union" T-shirt.

She wanted to make information about the signs of rising fascism and your rights available to students who might not be in classes where that was being discussed. “Are we cooked?” asked one student, who was glad to learn more about what he could do to protect himself and others.

At the University of Hawaii, organizers planned events around the idea that “art kills fascism.” They made a list of all of the words the Trump administration is attempting to ban from campuses and classrooms and made quilts, modeling the idea on the AIDS quilt.

PALESTINE IS CENTRAL

For those who could not attend a local event, CAHE offered a full-day program of online events, including workshops on sanctuary universities, institutional debt, and the Gaza solidarity movement. Another way to hold a local event was to hold a watch party for some part of this online programming, which happened on dozens of campuses.

Early in the week, CAHE hosted a livestream watch party of “The Palestine Exception.” In the current political moment, the freedom to dissent is closely linked to the demand to end the genocide in Palestine.

The number of events across the country exploded this year. “There is an uptick in the participation from last year because of our vocalization of the unfolding of genocide in and beyond Palestine,” said Karim Mattar, an associate professor of English at the University of Colorado.

“We have an ethical obligation to respond to this, but it is also a fact that Palestine is the crucible by which this administration and previous administrations have pushed to reshape higher education.”

Mattar first encountered CAHE at a membership drive at last year’s event. Now he is one of the coalition’s organizers.

Key to its success, he says, is that “we chart a middle ground between AAUP and HELU and the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Jewish Voices for Palestine, Faculty for Justice in Palestine, and other groups. We all recognize the violations of free speech across the country, and we draw in from all groups.”

REFORM LEADERS AND SELF-ORGANIZING

Many of the CAHE organizers are leaders in the recently formed AAUP Advocacy Local 6741, a nationwide umbrella for AAUP members who are not part of a collective bargaining chapter.

Those leaders ran as a progressive slate on a platform to grow the advocacy chapters (nonbargaining chapters of AAUP) through rank-and-file organizing.

Ferguson said many of the AAUP chapters participating in the day of action had attended one of the listening sessions that the new leaders held after they took office.

“We talked about acting like a union before you are a union,” she said. “They went back to their locals to organize, and it gave them more courage to take more risks.”

New reform leadership in AAUP national also generated material support for the day of action. So did the support of the growing national coalition of higher education unions, HELU.

It has been “a real example that when you create the space for workers to gather, they can and will self-organize,” said AAUP Local 6741 Secretary-Treasurer Bill Mullen, one of the CAHE organizers.

MORE THAN A ONE-OFF?

On national calls planning the day of action, Mullen framed it as more than a one-off—as part of an escalating campaign.

What that escalation will look like is still uncertain. The CAHE organizers are meeting soon to reflect and consider next steps.

Everyone I spoke to recognized the need to not only deepen organizing within the universities—CAHE supports wall-to-wall organizing on campuses—but also beyond.

An organizer from the University of Hawaii, who asked not to be named because of their status on a student visa, said, “In our university, after learning that the university cannot provide resources or be a trusted source, people are starting to see unions as the organization they can rely on.”