Academic Freedom, Democracy, and the Role of Faculty Unions

This article is part of a preview to the spring 2025 issue of Academe. The full issue will be published in May.

In the United States, we face an authoritarian threat unlike anything we have seen in our lifetimes. President Donald Trump is swiftly implementing destructive, dehumanizing, and undemocratic dictates from Project 2025, the authoritarian playbook for his second term.

Elon Musk is carrying out his own vast agenda (some would say shadow presidency) with the impunity of an autocrat. Musk and his aides are waging reckless attacks on vital research, accessing highly restricted sensitive personnel information, and purging the civil service of independent experts. All this from a man who received not a single vote from the American electorate, nor congressional vetting or approval. 

It is not hyperbole to say that the survival of democratic government and a free civil society in the United States is at risk. The AFT, working in conjunction with the AAUP, is using every resource and tool we have in the fight to defend American democracy. We are taking on both Trump and Musk—in courts of law, in the court of public opinion, in Congress, and through commerce—with our allies in civil society and the labor movement.

A key element in our fight is protecting freedom of expression and, because we are a union of educators, defending academic and intellectual freedom.

Academic freedom is not a special perk—it is the necessary precondition for experimenting, innovating, taking risks, and challenging orthodoxy. Sadly, in our current illiberal environment, academic freedom is also needed to teach honest history, to uphold established scientific truths, and to fight the exclusion of and discrimination against marginalized communities.

Colleges and universities—and higher education faculty and staff—play an essential role in ensuring vigorous debate on important matters and about the issues that shape our world. It is more important than ever to provide inclusive learning environments where difficult discussions and debates can happen and where free speech on campus is protected.

Amid the wave of campus protests after the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel and the ensuing Gaza war, the AFT reaffirmed our commitment to free speech and peaceful protest, and we reiterated our condemnation of antisemitism and of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab hate speech and violence. We must condemn hate and violence and stand up for academic freedom and free expression.

Schools and campuses must be safe and welcoming for all. But right now, polls show that the majority of Jewish students feel less safe because of anti-Israel campus protests and encampments. Surveys—by the Anti-Defamation League, Hillel, and others—show that protests have also made it more difficult to learn, study, or concentrate, and that students have had classes canceled, interrupted, or moved to Zoom or have been blocked from attending them.

Clearly more must be done to ensure that all students, faculty, and staff feel safe and welcome on campus and can engage with one another across differences. Colleges and universities should be sites of free and open debate, where challenging—and sometimes painful—topics and opposing ideas should be discussed and debated in ways that respect diversity of thought and the dignity and humanity of all.

Contrary to the claims by some that universities are bastions of indoctrination, the goal of education is not to get all students on the same page politically or ideologically. It is to develop their ability to reason through complex problems, to separate fact from fiction and information from disinformation, to apply reasoning, and to form their own opinions. Critical thinking is the most important muscle in the exercise of democracy. 

Forces Weakening Academic Freedom

American democracy and academic freedom in US colleges and universities are under simultaneous threat. These threats, in turn, jeopardize America’s economy and our vaunted innovative spirit.

The fifty-year trend of public disinvestment in our public colleges and universities has led to higher tuition and fees for students, cuts in academic programs and courses, institutional closures, and the decline of stable, full-time positions in academia.

The rampant dismantling of tenure-track positions over the past several decades has done grave harm to academic freedom. Contingent workers now make up two-thirds of the nation’s academic workforce, with only a quarter tenured or tenure-track. Increasing numbers of academics are joining the ranks of gig workers. Precarious employment understandably chills the exercise of academic freedom and risk taking.

A national survey of more than nine thousand higher education faculty in the United States found disturbing signs of a national crisis for educational freedom. The survey was conducted by the AAUP (which is affiliated with the AFT), the American Association of Colleges and Universities, and NORC (formerly the National Opinion Research Center) at the University of Chicago.

Significant numbers of faculty report that their academic freedom has diminished in recent years. They feel more constrained in their ability to speak freely in the classroom and as citizens. Sizable numbers also report increased pressure to avoid controversy from state lawmakers, from funders or donors, and from regents. More than half of the surveyed faculty report that they have self-censored in response to perceived threats to their  academic freedom, including refraining from expressing views that they, as scholars, believe are correct.

Political scrutiny and attacks on universities and colleges escalated in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election. Congressional Republicans called university presidents to McCarthy-style hearings about their handling of protests against the war in Gaza. Top Republican lawmakers have threatened to pull billions of dollars of federal funding from US universities that have allowed pro-Palestinian protests on their campuses.

The state of Florida is the canary in a coal mine for educational freedom in American higher education. Other states controlled by MAGA Republicans often adopt the laws, policies, and practices Florida pioneered, and congressional Republicans have proposed national legislation based on what Florida has done. In the last five years, Florida has

• eviscerated tenure protections;
• engaged in a hostile takeover of New College of Florida, a once highly regarded state college with a progressive educational philosophy;
• eliminated all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in state universities and colleges;
• removed sociology from the core curriculum in state universities and colleges after the state education commissioner declared that the discipline had been “hijacked by left-wing activists”;
• pulled scores of courses from the core curriculum in state universities and colleges; and
• banned the AP African American studies course for its discussion of racism and African American history.

Florida is hardly alone in undermining educational freedom. Republican lawmakers in Ohio have introduced a bill that would ban DEI efforts, set rules around classroom discussions, and take away the right of college and university faculty to strike. The Texas AAUP conference says universities are already overcomplying with the state’s ambiguous DEI ban. Now, as Karma Chávez writes elsewhere in this issue, Republican lawmakers in Texas plan to file legislation to limit the role of professors in shared governance on their campuses.

Trump has trained his sights on America’s colleges and universities as well, accusing them of being “dominated by Marxist Maniacs and lunatics.” His vice president, JD Vance, called professors “the enemy” and promised to “aggressively attack the universities in this country.” A tactic in their quest to quash and control higher education, their perceived opponent, is to smear it.

In the first week of his second term, Trump issued executive orders that created huge uncertainty and anxiety for researchers and scientists who rely on federal grants to fund their research and their livelihoods. These funding freezes not only are attacks on the academic workers who conduct research in these labs. They also result in very real harm to the public—to all of us. We have spoken to members who are primary investigators in labs that are researching links between common viruses and cancer, working on opioid addiction, and researching cures to type 1 diabetes. Freezing this funding is an unprecedented attack on public health and on the integrity and independence of academic research.

If Trump continues to carry out mandates from Project 2025, the administration could move to eliminate public student loan forgiveness, impose federal regulations on the accreditation process, require federally funded research to be aligned with the administration’s priorities, and wage further attacks on whatever he doesn’t agree with by labeling it as “DEI.”

Add to this litany of challenges a long-standing problem we must confront: the perception of higher education as elitist. As Nick Burns, an editor at Americas Quarterly, wrote in The New York Times, “Even as concerns about social justice continue to preoccupy students and administrations, these universities often seem to be out of touch with the society they claim to care so much about.” 

A Pew research study last year found that 45 percent of Americans say colleges and universities have a negative impact on the country. That is staggering, and unfortunately, it’s not an outlier.

A 2024 Gallup survey about Americans’ confidence in various institutions found that an increasing proportion of US adults say they have little or no confidence in higher education. Of Americans who lack confidence in higher education, 41 percent mention colleges as being “too liberal,” trying to “indoctrinate” or “brainwash” students, or not allowing students to think for themselves as reasons for their opinions. 

How Do We Defend Academic Freedom?

This is a dizzying array of challenges confronting higher education. Here is my thinking on what we need to do to make sure that academic work is protected: Our efforts must be centered around the principal purpose of higher education—indeed, around the purpose of knowledge.

Consider the Morrill Act of 1862, which created the foundation for what is today the public system of higher education in the United States. The act provided that all qualified students should have access to a land-grant university education grounded in research and scholarship. Of course, “all” at the time meant all white men; the Second Morrill Act of 1890 expanded that to include Black men.

This view of knowledge for all is in the DNA of American higher education. My alma mater, Cornell University, as New York State’s land-grant institution, describes its charge as “advancing the lives of citizens through excellence in teaching, research and public service.” Adlai Stevenson II described the essential purpose of higher education articulated in the Wisconsin Idea as “the application of intelligence and reason to the problems of society.”

These are the foundational purposes of higher education. Scholarship. Research. Social and economic mobility. Societal improvement. I believe that most Americans generally support those purposes.

But we have to be clear-eyed. For most people in the United States, the concept of tenure reeks of elitism: “We are better than the rest of you.” A 2020 AAUP data snapshot by Hans-Joerg Tiede shows that support for faculty freedom of expression has been falling in recent years, particularly among those who hold conservative views. If we are to stem the continued erosion of academic freedom, we have to think about it in a different way.

The challenge I am laying out is for us to open up the aperture. To frame academic freedom in a way that makes clear that it involves the rights of students to learn, the rights of citizens to be informed, the right for communities to have a better future—not just intellectually but economically.

We must make common cause with the local economy and local businesses. Often the college or university is the engine of the local economy. We must build relationships. Offer job training, internships. Let’s make it clear we need each other. 

We must demonstrate the direct connection of community and economic well-being to the purposes of higher education that I just discussed: advancing knowledge, fostering social mobility, creating opportunity, and benefiting society. If our argument for academic freedom is that it is only about the freedom of an elite few, it will fail.

We must show that students’ freedom to learn is harmed when educators are too scared to allow discussion of vaguely defined “divisive concepts.” We must show that it is an assault on educational freedom to prohibit teaching a full and honest account of our nation’s history. In our pluralistic society, it is unfathomably myopic to limit discussion of racism, sexism, and other societal harms.

We are in a dangerous moment, when democratically elected leaders in the United States are actively curtailing freedoms. Look at the torrent of assaults on rights, freedoms, and vulnerable populations. The targeting of reproductive freedom, immigrants, and the LGBTQIA+ community. And, yes, the targeting of education.

Our unions must be the main defenders of academic freedom. We can’t leave it to administrators; just look at how many rolled over in Florida. We can’t leave it to governments, because in many places they are the problem.

To secure, protect, and promote these rights and this common good, we must act collectively. It’s why the AFT, in alliance with the AAUP, is organizing so aggressively. It’s why we are fighting for real job security for academic workers holding precarious appointments, why we are negotiating protections for academic freedom into our contracts, and why we are defending our members and the important role that higher education plays in knowledge production through lawsuits and other actions. It’s why the affiliation of the AFT with the AAUP is so important. It’s why winning elections is so important.

The AFT has fought the battle for freedom of expression, for academic and intellectual freedom in education, throughout our existence. We will continue this fight, alongside allies, because it is at the very core of who we are as a union.

Randi Weingarten is president of the AFT.