Professors Are Not the Enemy. Fascists Are. 

A statement from AAUP President Todd Wolfson:

The ascension of J. D. Vance to the Republican presidential ticket has brought the decades-long battle to define the future of American higher education to a tipping point. With Vance, American Far-Right authoritarians have succeeded in elevating a fascist who vows to “aggressively attack universities in this country” to within striking distance of their goal: the annihilation of American higher education as we know it. All those who care about higher education, academic freedom, and the future of democracy should prepare for the fight ahead by organizing their campus communities.

Vance’s labeling of professors as “the enemy” and his praise of Hungarian dictator Viktor Orbán’s seizure of state universities as “the closest that conservatives have ever gotten to successfully dealing with leftwing domination of universities” are unambiguous. Should he and the dark-money funders backing him gain power, they aim to take control of American higher education and bend it to their will. Ironically, they would use fear and misinformation to turn colleges and universities into what the Far Right has for years falsely accused them of being: ideological indoctrination centers.

The recent history of right-wing attacks on higher education has been expertly laid out in the AAUP’s report Manufacturing Backlash: Right-Wing Think Tanks and Legislative Attacks on Higher Education. Between 2021 and 2023, more than one hundred and fifty bills were introduced in state legislatures by radical conservatives seeking to undermine academic freedom and university autonomy. These bills included ninety-nine academic gag orders seeking to ban “critical race theory” or other so-called “divisive concepts” as well as efforts to defund campus diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives; weaken tenure and accreditation; and establish academic programs designed to teach and promote ideological agendas.

While attacks on American higher education are nothing new, the scope of the Project 2025 blueprint for a Trump-Vance presidency offers a frightening glimpse into an authoritarian future that would transform American colleges and universities into thought-control factories by stifling ideas, silencing debate, and destroying autonomy. Project 2025 would roll back decades of progress on access to higher education, eliminate protections for LGBTQ+ students and sexual assault survivors, privatize student loans, end loan forgiveness, and, if we take its authors at their word, abolish the Department of Education entirely. We cannot afford to let this happen.

Without a just and inclusive higher education system that serves the public good, the majority of Americans will be excluded from meaningful participation in our democracy. The AAUP is dedicated to fighting for an inclusive higher education system that works for and is led by working people, students, and the communities it serves. We call on national leaders to help resolve the higher education crisis by fully funding higher education, expanding access, ending the student debt emergency, and protecting the freedom to learn, speak, assemble, research, and organize in all higher education institutions.

We are in a crucial moment that will decide the future of higher education for decades to come. Colleges and universities are the bedrock of American democracy and the engine of social mobility, innovation, and progress. We can't allow fascists to strip it away. Now is the time to fight.