Dear colleague,
Rutgers AAUP-AFT is one of the plaintiffs in a First Amendment lawsuit filed today that seeks to block the Trump administration from carrying out arrests, detentions, and deportations of international students and scholars for speaking their minds and engaging in lawful protest. Though the Adjunct Faculty Union and AAUP-BHSNJ are not plaintiffs, leaders of these unions fully support our legal effort.
We’re proud to join the national American Association of University Professors, the Harvard and NYU AAUP chapters, and the Middle East Studies Association in challenging Trump’s cruel silencing of the vulnerable. The AAUP-AFT Executive Council voted last week to join the suit, and lawyers from the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University filed it in federal court this morning. Click here to read the filed complaint. We expect this suit to get a lot media attention—click here to read a story in the Guardian.
We’ve all watched with fear and anger as the Trump administration unlawfully targets higher ed colleagues, such as Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate student and leader of last spring’s pro-Palestine encampment, who was abducted by immigration authorities despite being a legal resident and not being accused of any crime. Other members of our academic communities have been detained or targeted for detention, including at Georgetown and Cornell.
Clearly the Trump administration is first going after those who speak up about Israel and Palestine, but they won’t stop there. They’ll come next for those who teach the history of slavery, provide gender-affirming health care, research climate change, or counsel students about their reproductive choices. And we can see that the Columbia administration’s capitulation to demands for draconian limits on free speech and faculty governance will only lead to more assaults on higher ed. We need to draw a line.
The lawsuit makes the case that the government’s targeting of our international colleagues and students violates all of our rights to hear their viewpoints. The First Amendment not only guarantees freedom of speech but also our freedom to hear and engage with others’ speech. The chilling effect of the threats against or deportations of our community members is very real for all of us. These threats diminish our ability to communicate with each other, teach our classes, conduct and share our research, and hear from our students.
By emphasizing the First Amendment rights of those with the protection of US citizenship, the suit aims to shield international scholars and students from becoming even more vulnerable by being at the center of legal challenges. We are heartened that a number of members immediately stepped up to participate in this case as “declarants” describing how their rights have been violated. We particularly want to acknowledge our non-citizen members who worked with the legal team on this case; their experiences are cited anonymously in the legal complaint.
We are not the only ones fighting this fight. Our national unions, AAUP and AFT, filed a separate suit today protesting Trump’s outrageous extortion-by-funding-cuts of Columbia. You can read that complaint here. If the Columbia administration won’t fight back, the rest of us will!
We’ll keep you up to date as these cases proceed, but we wanted to let our members know that AAUP-AFT is stepping up to this legal battle against one of the most frightening displays of authoritarianism of this moment. The slogan on our union t-shirts has never been more true: An injury to one is an injury to all. We need to resist tyranny by fighting for everyone targeted by the Trump administration!
In solidarity,
Rutgers AAUP-AFT, Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union, and AAUP-BHSNJ
Rutgers AAUP-AFT Facebook page: https://facebook.com/RUaaup/
Follow us on Twitter @ruaaup and Instagram @rutgersaaup
Freedom School YouTubeChannel: https://rutgersaaup.org/YouTube
Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/rutgersptlfc
Follow us on Twitter and Instagram: @ruaaup_ptl
Visit our website: https://rutgers-ptlfc.org/
AAUP-BHSNJ website: https://aaupbhsnj.org/
AAUP-BHSNJ Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/RUaaupbhsnj
Reminder
- Add your name to a petition (if you haven’t already) calling on the Rutgers administration to protect our whole community in the face of the Trump administration’s assault. We need to work together to defend our university!