Speech by Randi Weingarten, President AFT and ASI before the CAUT and Education International Academic Freedom Conference 2025: Knowledge and Power: The International Struggle for Academic Freedom, February 8, 2025, Calgary, Alberta
Thank you for inviting me to speak to you about academic freedom and democracy at a moment when both are imperiled throughout much of the world. I have worn a few hats in my working life—lawyer, high school civics teacher and now, union president. But I am not steeped in the academic world the way you are. You are not going to get from me erudite ruminations about the academy. What you’ll get from me is my thinking on what we need to do to make sure that your academic work is protected.
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 vast portfolio (some would say shadow presidency) with the impunity of an autocrat. Musk and his aides are waging capricious 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 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.
The AFT’s founding slogan over a century ago was “Democracy in Education, Education for Democracy.” We understand that freedom of expression and of thought, and the freedom to pursue and develop new knowledge in service of the public good is the lifeblood of what we do in our classrooms, in lecture halls and in research labs.
As a union of educators, we are especially committed to the freedom of students to learn, because that is how they become engaged, empowered actors in civil society.
Academic freedom is not a special perk—it is the necessary precondition to experiment, innovate, take risks and challenge 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.
The same rights that citizens have in a free and democratic society—freedom of thought, of expression, of press, and of association; the right to assemble and peacefully protest; due process and protections against arbitrary and capricious discipline—should be guaranteed in academic institutions—for faculty, staff and students.
These rights carry the responsibility to respect the rights of others. It is not acceptable to insist upon your own right to host campus speakers, for example, yet seek to deplatform campus speakers with whom you disagree.
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 anti-Muslim and anti-Arab hate speech and violence. We have to be against hate and against violence and stand up for academic freedom and free expression. We can and must do both.
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 cancelled, interrupted, moved to Zoom or been blocked from attending.
Some of this has been weaponized by malign, antidemocratic forces that need chaos and division to achieve their ends. But there is real fear. Clearly more must be done to ensure all students, faculty and staff feel safe and welcome on campus and can engage 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. Higher education as a site of free speech and protest is even more essential during times of unrest and uncertainty.
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 analyze, critique and contextualize information. To think for themselves. The ability to reason through complex problems, to separate fact from fiction and information from disinformation, to apply reasoning and form one’s own opinions is central to knowledge and essential to democracy. Critical thinking is the most important muscle in the exercise of democracy.
Forces Weakening Academic Freedom
American democracy and academic freedom in America’s colleges and universities are under simultaneous threat.
The 50-year trend of public disinvestment in our public colleges and universities has led to higher tuition and fees for students, to 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 (68 percent) of the nation’s academic workforce, with only a quarter (24 percent) tenured or tenure-track. Academics increasingly are joining the ranks of gig workers. Precarious employment understandably chills the exercise of academic freedom.
A national survey of more than 9,000 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 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 in speaking as a citizen. Sizable numbers of faculty report increased pressure to avoid controversy from state lawmakers, from funders or donors, and from regents—the U.S. equivalent of trustees or governors. More than half (53 percent) of faculty report that they have self-censored in response to declining academic freedom, including refraining from expressing views which they believe as a scholar 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 universities in the U.S. that have allowed pro-Palestinian protests on their campuses.
The state of Florida is “the canary in the 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 that provide the main defense for academic freedom in the state’s public universities and colleges;
Engaged in a hostile takeover of the New College, a once highly regarded state college with a progressive educational philosophy;
Eliminated all DEI programs in state universities and colleges;
Removed sociology from the core curriculum in state universities and colleges after its 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, without any due process findings, on the grounds that they contained “unproven, speculative, or exploratory content”; 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 diversity and inclusion efforts, set rules around classroom discussions and take away the right of college and university faculty to strike. The Texas chapter of the AAUP says universities are already over-complying with the state’s ambiguous DEI ban. Now Republican lawmakers in Texas plan to file legislation to limit the influence of professors on their campuses.
Donald Trump has trained his sites on America’s colleges and universities, as well, saying they are “dominated by Marxist Maniacs and lunatics.” His Vice President, J.D. Vance, called professors “the enemy” and promised to “aggressively attack the universities in this country.”
Indeed, in the first week of his second term, Trump issued executive orders that created huge uncertainty and anxiety for researchers and scientists—including in Canada and Europe—who rely on federal grants to fund their research and their livelihoods. These funding freezes are not only attacks on the academic workers who work 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. This is an unprecedented attack on public health, and on the integrity and independence of academic research.
John Aubrey Douglass, a professor and researcher at Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education, notes that the new administration is signaling disruption to U.S. campuses on a seismic scale: dramatic cuts in student aid and in research funding, possible deportation of tens of thousands of students, and perhaps aggressive efforts to impose more federal control over curriculum, faculty hiring and other day-to-day university operations.
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 DEI. Make no mistake: These attacks on DEI are attacks on basic human rights—the central pillars of a democratic society.
Add to this litany of challenges a longstanding 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 not an outlier.
A 2024 Gallup survey about Americans’ confidence in various institutions found that an increasing proportion of U.S. adults say they have little or no confidence in higher education. Of Americans who lack confidence in higher education, 41 percent mention colleges 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 and Strengthen 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 your academic work is protected. It has to be centered around what the central purpose of higher education is. Indeed, around what the purpose of knowledge is.
Think back to 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 set forth 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 males; the Morrill Act of 1890 expanded to include black males.
This view of knowledge for all is in the DNA of American higher education. Here’s how my alma mater, Cornell University, as New York state’s land grant institution, describes its charge: To advance “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 Plan 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 and much of the world generally are supportive of those purposes.
But we have to be clear-eyed. For most people in the United States and around the world, the concept of tenure reeks of “we are better than the rest of you.” An AAUP data snapshot 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 to open up the aperture. To frame academic freedom so it is explicitly clear that it involves the rights of students to learn and the rights of citizens to be informed.
That we make common cause with local economy, local business. Often the college or university is the engine of the local economy. Build relationships. Job training… internships… make it clear we need each other.
So there is an unmistakable, direct connection to the purposes of higher education that I just discussed—advancing knowledge, 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. Targeting reproductive freedom; immigrants; and the LGBTQ community. And, yes, targeting 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 is organizing so aggressively. It’s why AFT is fighting for real job security for our academic workers in 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 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. Academic unions around the world must learn from and work with each other in defense of academic freedom. Trumpian politics are also afoot in Canada, Europe, Argentina, and elsewhere. We will continue this fight, alongside allies like our partners in Education International, because it is at the very core of who we are as a union and to the preservation of democracy.
Thank you.
View the original article and our Inspiration here