By Randi Weingarten

This article is adapted from a keynote address given to the CAUT and Educational International conference on academic freedom held in Calgary, February 7-8, 2025.

In the United States, we face a grave authoritarian threat. President Donald Trump is swiftly implementing the destructive, dehumanizing and undemocratic dictates from Project 2025, the authoritarian playbook for his second term.

Elon Musk is carrying out his own vast portfolio (some would say shadow presidency) with the impunity of an autocrat and the confidence of an oligarch. Musk and his aides are waging reckless attacks on vital research, accessing highly restricted sensitive personnel information, and purging the civil service of independent experts.

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) is using every tool we have to defend American democracy — in courts of law, in the court of public opinion, in Congress, through commerce, and by working in common cause with community partners.

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.

Academic freedom is not a special perk. It is the necessary precondition for experimenting, innovating, taking risks and challenging 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.

Amid the wave of campus protests after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and the ensuing Gaza war, the AFT reaffirmed our commitment to free speech and peaceful, non-violent protest, and we reiterated our condemnation of antisemitism and of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab hate speech and violence. We must condemn hate and violence and stand up for academic freedom and free expression.

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.

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. 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, cuts in academic programs, institutional closures, and the decline of stable, full-time positions in academia.

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 that have allowed pro-Palestinian protests on their campuses.

Trump has trained his sights on America’s colleges and universities, as well, accusing them of being “dominated by Marxist Maniacs and lunatics.”

In the first week of his second term, Trump issued executive orders that created huge uncertainty and anxiety for researchers and scientists who rely on federal grants to fund their research and their livelihoods.

Add to this litany of challenges a long-standing problem we must confront: the perception of higher education as elitist.

How do we defend and strengthen academic freedom?

Here is my thinking on what we need to do to make sure that academic work is protected: Our efforts must be centred around the central purpose of higher education — indeed, around the purpose of knowledge — advancing knowledge, fostering social mobility, creating opportunity, and benefiting society. I believe that most Americans generally support those purposes.

But we must be clear-eyed. For most people in the United States, 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 must think about it in a different way.

The challenge I am laying out is for us 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. The right for communities to have a better future — not just intellectually but economically.

We must make common cause with the local economy, local businesses. Often the college or university is the engine of the local economy. We must build relationships. Offer job training, internships. Let’s make it clear we need each other.

That is true on the national level as well. The Trump administration’s cuts to the National Institutes of Health, aimed at defunding universities, will decimate research to cure deadly diseases and to foster other economic, health and social advancements.

We must demonstrate the direct connection of community and economic well-being to the purposes of higher education. 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. The targeting of reproductive freedom, immigrants and the LGBTQIA+ community. And, yes, the targeting of education.

Education unions must be the main defenders of academic freedom. We can’t leave it to administrators; many have rolled over in the face of political threats. 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. That’s why the AFT is organizing so aggressively, why we are fighting for real job security for our academic workers in precarious appointments, and why we are negotiating protections for academic freedom into our contracts. That’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. We will continue this fight, alongside allies, because it is at the very core of who we are as a union.

Randi Weingarten is president of the American Federation of Teachers, which represents 1.8 million union members working in education, health care and the public sector.