The AAUP and the AFT today sued the Trump administration on behalf of our members 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. While the Trump administration has been slashing funding since its first days in office, this move represents a stunning new tactic: using cuts as a cudgel to coerce a private institution to adopt restrictive speech codes and allow government control over teaching and learning

The national AAUP; chapters at Harvard, Rutgers, and NYU; and the Middle East Studies Association today filed a lawsuit seeking 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.

Today, the AAUP and a coalition including educators, school districts, and unions filed a legal action against the Trump administration to stop the dismantling of the Department of Education and mass firings that will decimate the crucial services the department provides to every American. This lawsuit is the first filed since President Trump’s executive order attempting to shutter the department.

A joint statement from AAUP chapters condemning the impoundment of $400 million in research funds and ICE's targeting of Columbia students and alumni involved in pro-Palestine protests.

The AAUP condemns in the strongest possible terms any university that would sacrifice its own students to the demands of an authoritarian government. Columbia University’s decision to punish students with multiyear suspensions, degree revocations, and expulsions is an outrageous assault on freedom of speech, student and faculty safety, shared governance, and free inquiry and thought.

The Trump administration has taken the unprecedented move of cancelling $400 million in federal contracts and grants to Columbia University in alleged response to “inaction by Columbia’s administration on antisemitism.” This heavy-handed partisan intrusion into Columbia’s academic, research, and health care operations will damage students’ education, stop progress toward lifesaving biomedical therapies, and harm patients being treated in Columbia’s hospitals. As we are seeing with the Trump administration's reckless cuts to NIH research funding, the result of this defunding will cause real harm to everyday Americans. Trump’s cuts to biomedical research kill.

The department has played a crucial role in the pathway to higher education for millions of Americans by providing and administering student loans, grants, and work-study programs. Without it, access to education for working class Americans will decrease. Funding for college education will be stripped away and programs for students with disabilities and students living in poverty will be eviscerated. Enforcement of civil rights laws against race- or sex-based discrimination in higher education will disappear.