American higher education stands at a crossroad.
Students and workers have faced the brunt of decades-long disinvestment by leaders from both major parties at the state and federal levels. After decades of public disinvestment, political interference, and manufactured mistrust, the very institutions that sustain free inquiry and democratic possibility are under concerted attack. These threats imperil not only our colleges and universities but also the civic fabric and future they sustain.
At the same time, research, the pursuit of new knowledge and understanding, is also under siege. Political interference, funding cuts, and ideological attacks threaten the independence of scientific inquiry, the humanities, and the arts alike. A democracy cannot thrive when research is censored, captured, or defunded.
Our students deserve the right to an affordable higher education and have their voices heard, in a diverse campus that fosters dignity, solidarity, and inclusion regardless of background. Our faculty and staff deserve workplaces that recognize the dignity and worth of those employed on their campuses, rather than turning campus workers into only part-timers and subcontracted staff—denying our colleagues the security of employment and tenure.
No longer should we have to be restrained in a straitjacket of debt, exclusion, and academic suppression.
We—students, faculty, staff, alumni, college leadership, and community allies—join together across institutions, states, and sectors to defend and transform higher education as a cornerstone of American democracy and a public good that belongs to all. Colleges and universities must remain places of open learning, shared governance, fair opportunity, and independent thought: where research and teaching serve society; where accessibility, affordability, and fair working conditions make that mission possible, and where knowledge serves the people, not power.
These principles express our shared commitments and guide our collective action. Member organizations may emphasize different aspects in their own work, but we stand together on this common ground.
Mutual Defense and Courageous Solidarity
To sustain a durable collective, we will proactively solicit solidarity when facing political pressure, freely offer our aid to those that are under threat, and reject short-sighted self-preservation.
- Name the forces seeking to undermine our rights and shared values.
- Persuade schools, organizations, and associations to commit to taking clear, bold stands together against repression.
- Reject efforts to divide institutions by making side deals under political pressure.
- Commit to mutual aid and public defense when academic freedom, inclusion, or institutional autonomy are attacked.
- Foster a campus culture of curiosity, care, and respect, and reject pressure to abandon campus support for a diverse student body, including trans students, students of color, first-generation students, and international students.
Access and Affordability
We must fight to open the gates to affordability, and dismantle the financial barriers to education, so that all current and future students can have the opportunity to higher education, regardless of financial background.
- Make college affordable for working families so that higher education is a right, not a commodity.
- Increase public investment in public colleges and universities and end the student debt crisis.
- Ensure meaningful connection between college education and/or non-degree technical training and work, careers, and civic life.
- Secure commitment from all institutions to need-blind admissions and an end to admissions and financial aid practices that disadvantage students of color and working-class students of all races.
- Strengthen pathways of preparation, inspiration, and opportunity for low-income, first-generation, and underrepresented students beginning in pre-K through to grade–12, ensuring that college access policies are matched by robust investments in the pipeline that connects diverse students to higher education and long-term success.
Civil Rights and Democratic Governance
- Secure academic freedom, civil liberties, and constitutional and human rights through the school’s own policies and practices—for the entire campus community, including all faculty, associated scholars, students, staff, and others with affiliations to the university.
- Support and protect international students and workers who are being targeted due to their opinions, race, or religion, and protect the human dignity of all members of the campus community.
- Refuse all data sharing with ICE or any other federal agency that is not legally-mandated, protect private information of students and staff to the fullest extent of the law, and reject any institutional actions that would endanger students or staff based on immigration status.
- Protect the participation of all students, faculty, and staff in decision-making, so campus community members have a meaningful voice in shaping their educational institutions.
- Ensure that all universities commit to transparency, fiscal accountability, and investment in the communities they serve.
Free Speech, Academic Freedom & Independence, Just Working Conditions
We affirm that fair and just working conditions for faculty and staff strengthen academic freedom, shared governance, and the democratic mission of higher education.
- Defend the rights of everyone in the campus community to free speech and peaceful assembly and to the freedom to learn, teach, and research without political interference.
- Safeguard the independence of colleges and universities to choose, through shared governance, their leadership, faculty, curriculum, and who they admit, without government interference or corporate capture.
- Stand against highly politicized processes for selecting governing boards.
- Support the rights of workers to organize.
- Affirm the commitment to the pursuit of knowledge, science, and the arts as public goods vital to democracy, without government censorship.
- Reforge and reimagine the historic compact between the federal government and universities in advancing knowledge and benefiting society through research and creative endeavors.