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Francie Diep and Eric Kelderman
Chronicle of Higher Education
Excerpt: Across the country, faculty activism is surging — a “direct result” of the federal government’s “attacks” on higher education, said Kelly Benjamin, a spokesperson for the national AAUP. Between January 1 and July 31 of 2025, the AAUP saw membership in its nonunion chapters, like Harvard’s, grow by 57 percent.
Interest in the AAUP seems especially intense at some of the most recognizable brand-name colleges, including those in the Ivy League. All of those chapters grew in 2025 — all but two of them faster than the national average. Columbia’s membership more than doubled. Princeton’s more than tripled.
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I recently listened to Ross Douthat’s interview with the philosopher Jennifer Frey. She is a serious thinker and an unusually courageous academic entrepreneur. What she built at the University of Tulsa before it was dismantled is exactly the sort of thing more universities should be attempting. Yet almost every argument she offered for the humanities is, I think, completely unpersuasive to anyone not already on our side of the table.
This report presents findings from a national survey of 1,959 law school faculty at 192 American Bar Association (ABA) approved law schools in the United States, conducted by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). As one of the largest surveys of law faculty on free expression and professional norms, the data reveal a profession that strongly endorses free speech principles while struggling to live them out in practice.
I just returned from the University of Wyoming, where I debated the President of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) Todd Wolfson over the need for colleges and universities to maintain institutional neutrality. The debate was organized by the Steamboat Institute and was live-streamed.
The formal question presented for debate was: “Is institutional neutrality necessary to preserve the university as a forum for open inquiry rather than an actor in political disputes?” I spoke in favor of institutional neutrality while Wolfson argued against it as a necessary component to higher education.
