On April 17, 2025, the Swarthmore chapter of the Association of American University Professors (AAUP) participated in the National Day of Action for Higher Ed, which included live-streamed lectures and a teach-in event on academic freedom. The teach-in was led by Farha Ghannam, Professor of Anthropology and president of Swarthmore’s chapter.
In her introductory remarks, Ghannam explained that the mission of the AAUP “is fundamentally to advocate for professors to work on very important issues such as faculty governance, fair compensation, and, fundamentally, the most important thing in my mind that is on the line these days: academic freedom.”
As to what exactly academic freedom means to the AAUP, Ghannam said that the organization defines it “as the ability of faculty and educators to be free to teach what they choose to teach, in line with their expertise. This freedom extends outside of the classroom in terms of doing research and also expressing your views both in academic circles and as a citizen.” Ghannam then introduced the panel of professors speaking at the event: Engineering Professor Matt Zucker, English Literature Assistant Professor and Director of the Writing Associate Program Alba Newmann Holmes, Educational Studies and Latin American and Latino Studies Associate Professor Edwin Mayorga, and Physics and Astronomy Professor David Cohen. All of the panelists were AAUP members, with Zucker serving as the vice president.
Newmann Holmes was the first of the panelists to speak, emphasizing that, according to the Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom’s online syllabus, academic freedom is a “corporate right,” or “a right afforded to and upheld by communities, rather than individuals, which structures how academics — tenured, untenured, and contingent — engage in their collective work of teaching, assessing research, publishing results, and speaking as public citizens.” She noted that academic freedom is an extension of free speech and that academic freedom is a “living and breathing thing” which is constantly contested, negotiated, and collectively enacted.
Newmann Holmes continued her remarks by quoting former Supreme Court Associate Justice Frankfurter’s concurrence in Wieman v. Updegraff (1952): “It is the special task of teachers to foster those habits of open-mindedness and critical inquiry which alone make for responsible citizens.” She continued, stating that “wherever [professors work] to encourage [their] students, colleagues, institutions, [and] nation to practice open-mindedness and critical inquiry, [they] are working within the sphere of [their] academic freedom and responsibilities.”
Newmann Holmes identified the three key tenets of academic freedom outlined by a 1940 AAUP statement. Firstly, the freedom for individuals to conduct and publish the research that they wish to; secondly, the freedom to discuss their subject, with care not to, in the language of the AAUP’s 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure: “introduce into their teaching controversial matter that has no relation to the subject.”; lastly, the freedom of academics to speak and write as citizens outside of their professional capacity, without fear of censorship or discipline by their associated institution, with the knowledge that professors’ role as scholars imposes special privileges and responsibilities.
Newmann Holmes ended with a note on action: “[educators] are called upon to raise the alarm, call our elected leaders, make space wherever we can, and to teach … Wherever you can, whoever you are, be an educator and open that space.”
Zucker was the next to speak, emphasizing how critical the current political moment is by providing three clear examples of the ways in which universities have been targeted by the Trump regime’s assault on higher education. His first example was of the Georgetown University Law Center receiving a letter from the interim United States attorney instructing the institution to cease promotion of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives. The interim attorney suggested that if the university did not comply, the federal government would not hire their graduates. Zucker highlighted Georgetown’s response: that it is illegal on the grounds of the First Amendment for the federal government to dictate the speech of private entities, as upheld by the Supreme Court; therefore, the federal government may not direct Georgetown’s curricula.
The second was the case of Columbia University, which received a letter from the General Services Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Education on March 13. The letter threatened the university with an academic receivership, which entails the placement of an external supervisor into a certain program by the federal government in order to guide and reform it.
According to Zucker, the threat of academic receivership is “very dire,” and “if it happens in a way that is directed by outside actors, it is a huge red flag for academic freedom.” Zucker went on to condemn Columbia’s capitulation to unconstitutional and unlawful demands from the Trump administration, as they agreed to reform even more programs than they were originally directed to. The case of Columbia is also related to the idea of viewpoint diversity, which Zucker explained is the idea that “every viewpoint on a topic should be represented, regardless of whether that viewpoint represents the consensus view of experts in the field.”
Finally, Zucker discussed the case of Harvard University, which was told by the same agencies as Columbia to discontinue their DEI programs and implement intradepartmental viewpoint diversity in hiring, as well as consider viewpoint diversity in admissions designs. According to Zucker, the letter expressed interest in “an auditing of programs to see whether they reflect ‘ideological capture,’ [which] refers to a pernicious claim that has circulated on the right that institutions of higher education have been ideologically captured by the left-wing.” Zucker continued, saying, “Even if that were true, it is not for the government to tell Harvard that it cannot have a slant.” Harvard, like Georgetown, responded by pushing back against the proposed reforms and potential audits.
Zucker emphasized the multiple layers of protection in place and the resultant layers of violations being committed in these cases. Faculty accrue academic freedom in multiple ways, and being a member of the academic professional community provides individual faculty members with some level of academic freedom, according to Zucker: “the AAUP itself has been recognized as a source of common law around academic freedom.”
In Georgetown’s case, Zucker asserted that the federal government has violated the Constitution, not only violating the First Amendment’s provision of free speech in general, but also undermining the university’s religious freedom, as Georgetown is a Catholic Jesuit institution. Furthermore, it is discriminatory to retaliate against an institution’s viewpoints by refusing to hire graduates from that institution.
Zucker concluded by identifying the importance of staying privy to the diverse forms of education that are being affected by Trump’s attacks, encouraging the audience to pay attention to the ways in which community colleges and small liberal arts colleges are being impacted, rather than just big name schools: “We do not serve our profession well when we focus all of the debate about education on the Ivy Leagues and big research universities.” Zucker emphasized, “Remember that an attack on any one of us is an attack on all of us, and that we have to defend the most vulnerable.”
Professor Mayorga took a practical approach to the teach-in, asking first and foremost, “What is to be done?” He noted the sensationalization of the current moment, identifying the ways in which “certain bodies, people and thoughts have been criminalized in order to advance a power grab on the entire country, if not the world.” The current approach fascinates Mayorga: “While I appreciate the sentiment of ‘doing everything within the extent of the law,’ and think it’s important, it begs to me the question of — that’s a very rational response, but are we living in rational times?”
Mayorga recalled a pivotal moment at the college, which felt different from the current atmosphere: the administration and students’ response to the first Trump administration. In 2017, the call for sanctuary status at the college was strong and swift. For Mayorga, “sanctuary is a praxis of freedom,” and this response was “an extremely powerful movement” that involved not only the students and faculty but also the Board of Directors and the administration. He asked, “Where is that collectivity now?” He noted that “the shock and awe of what’s happening right now feels like this suddenly came about at the speed of turbo-capitalism, but it didn’t happen overnight. We have to reckon with how we enabled and facilitated this, emotionally, intellectually, and socially … How did we get here?”
Mayorga reiterated Zucker’s acknowledgement that all forms of education are being impacted by the Trump administration, from preschool and Head Start to K-12 schools to all forms of higher education. He noted that an assessment of the current moment is needed — that various institutions must be held accountable for their complacency or adverse actions — but that this cannot be the extent of the work that is done. Rather, he returned to his original question, asking where we might go from here. Mayorga suggested that it is important to “find the connective tissue that allows us to work in solidarity with one another,” that solidarity is what creates a sense of sanctuary, and that students, administrators, and professors alike must “be bold, be courageous, take a stand, and ultimately trust one another. This is what we need to reckon with here, is that part of what has been broken is trust, a sense of confidence.”
Professor Cohen was the last to speak and used his time to expand on the idea introduced by Zucker: full viewpoint diversity. Cohen gave an example: “Ten percent of Americans believe that the Earth is flat and another 10 percent are ‘flat-Earth curious,’ so full viewpoint diversity would mean that if [the physics department] were to get that ninth or tenth tenure line, [that professor] would pretty much have to be a flat-Earther.” He continued on, saying, “Things that are interesting are in flux so there’s some disagreement, right? But I can tell you that I have read the scientific literature, and there is no evidence of a flat Earth.”
Cohen also brought up the concept of shared faculty governance, a model that was developed by the AAUP following World War I. The AAUP does not give specific guidelines as to what shared faculty governance should look like, leaving it up to individual professors at distinct institutions. For Cohen, shared faculty governance should allow educational institutions to “act like universities, not like businesses.” He continued, “Principles are good, but if there isn’t money and resources to back up those principles, then they’re moot.”
Cohen critiqued Swarthmore’s top-down model, stating that the administration’s near-exclusive control over decision-making, selection of task forces, and resource allocation is not always in the best interest of faculty and students. He even remarked on the demographics of the audience, saying, “It is too bad there aren’t any administrators here. At all.” In conclusion, he urged the audience to “look carefully and in detail at how resources are being allocated, how tenure lines are being given out or not given out, think about who’s making decisions and what the goals are of [Swarthmore College].” Then, to the faculty in the audience, he noted that “we have the power, as faculty, if we act collectively, to have a faculty senate, change rules, and change the ways that resources are allocated.”
The question-and-answer portion of the event was lively and briefly heated. It included questions from faculty and students on the powers of the AAUP, organizing, and the role of the classroom and university in general. Classics Professor and department chair William Turpin emphasized that he believes that “academic freedom is not a license for us to use our podium to preach our personal beliefs, except when they intersect with what we teach.” The panel pushed back against this statement, giving various examples of the ways in which academics unexpectedly implicate politics. This exchange and other disagreements throughout the event revealed clear divisions among faculty members as to the best ways to conceptualize and approach academic freedom here at Swarthmore.
In response to Turpin, Newmann Holmes acknowledged that there is a real power imbalance between professors and their students, but stated that “it’s about opening space, and also [professors] learning from students, rather than a unidirectional flow of information.” As Zucker put it, “we have an obligation to point out in all ways, and at all times, the social impacts of what we do … there is no field that is disjoint from politics, or that is disjoint from morality.” Mayorga also quoted John Dewey, stating that “education is not preparation for life, but life itself.”
