On Thursday, 3/27/25 the UNC AAUP held a hybrid meeting for concerned members of the UNC community (AAUP member or not) about the current attacks on higher education. While there were suggested topics of conversation, the attendees focused on how to be proactive in protecting UNC community members from ICE raids.

Invited guests

AAUP Vice-President Rotua Lumbantobing and Osamudia James, UNC Law Professor and co-signer of this memo to university OGCs explaining the lawfulness of DEI programs. (VP Lumbantobing was unable to join via zoom.)

Summary of key next steps

• Two working groups formed, focused on “Information and Resources” and “Emergency Support” for students, faculty and staff at-risk. Email mwpalm@gmail.com to join either.
• Most immediately, attendees wanted clarity from the university about what counts as private space on campus that ICE agents can’t enter without a warrant. The Faculty Senate has already raised this issue but hasn’t gotten a clear answer.
• Share best practices for keeping UNC community members safe from ICE and other forces of policing on campus
• Create a way to keep in touch with members who attended the meeting. Email info@unc-ch-aaup.org if you want to join or organize a task force or if you want to join the UNC Chapter of the AAUP. Email Michael Palm, mwpalm@gmail.com, if you want to be on the AAUP listserv. You don’t have to be a member of the AAUP to be on the listserv.
• Join with other local organizations, like TransparUNCy (undergrad activist group worth following) and UE Local 150, which are advocating for similar causes.

We have to support one another to stay vocal and co-create the leadership and community we are seeking.

We need to both donate to and show up for local chapters of groups like NAACP, Men for Racial Justice, and other grassroots community groups.

Questions and answers

Q1. Why join the AAUP?

• AAUP files lawsuits that defend higher education and protect faculty
• AAUP protects academic freedom. The organization was founded in 1915 to define and defend academic freedom, a role it continues to play.
• Note: State law prohibits North Carolina employees from collective bargaining, giving state employees fewer rights and protections than most other states. However, we do have the right to unionize.
• AAUP protects promotion and tenure rights through its Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure (Committee A) and the policies it has affirmed dating back to its founding in 1915.
• The AAUP and professional organizations are providing leadership right now that the university isn’t.
• Note: The dues to join are expensive but 1. You can pay in monthly installments and 2. The national AAUP gives a lot of money back to the state AAUP to use locally.

Q2. Who, if anyone, is organizing with staff?

• UE Local 150 is the union for staff at UNC and graduate student workers. Staff members often attend meetings that faculty organize. Not sure about grad student workers.
• Note: Staff are particularly vulnerable, especially if their positions are dependent on grants.

Q3. What are other tactics can we use besides filing lawsuits to resist the attack on higher education?

• Join the planned Days of Action organized by the AAUP
  • April 8 Day of Action: Kill the Cuts
  • April 17 Day of Action for Higher Ed
• Share collectively sourced information about best practices that been effective in defending our rights
• Compile and share information about which federal grants have been cut at so that we can raise awareness about the harms the cuts have caused and gauge the extent of the cuts. To do: Create a local to UNC list of cancelled grants to supplement what’s already available. Can be crowdsourced.
  • Here are guidelines about what to do if your federal grant is ended
  • Here is a report from Department of Health and Human Services and the NIH listing grants that have been terminated as of 3/21/25.

Q4. What can do to protect people targeted by ICE, especially immigrants and other people with precarious citizenship status? Relatedly, how do we protect rights of protestors?

• AAUP and the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) had a know your rights webinar on 3-27-25
• When talking to UNC administration or with ICE agents, emphasize your Fourth Amendment Right to be protected from unreasonable search and seizure. Stand up for other people if you see them being attacked by ICE.
• Get trained by Siembra NC about how to protect people from ICE raids. Go to a training, join or volunteer at Siembra, and download this playbook from them about what to do defend immigrants. Also helpful: Upstander Training.
• Federal law says that ICE can’t enter private spaces without a judicial warrant signed by a judge. So far, UNC has established that dorms are private spaces that ICE can’t enter without a warrant if the entry is locked. To do: Get UNC to define what other spaces on campus count as private spaces. For instance, offices seem like they should be considered private spaces.

Q5. What is the AAUP and other members of campus doing to protect grad students of color who are being targeted for speaking up to support Palestine?

• Organizing protests like last year’s encampments and doing other forms of direct actions are still options
• Note: Some grad students who are immigrants are afraid to travel home, travel to other states, or move around on campus because they are afraid of being abducted (this includes students with legal status).

Q6. Has the UNC AAUP expressed concerns about ICE raids to the administration?

• No, because UNC AAUP, as a small organization, is not big enough to meet independently with the administration. This moment is a chance to join the AAUP and shape the organization the way you want to see it. The AAUP is us.

• We also can build power by connecting with the other AAUPs across North Carolina and organizing with them.

Comments

• On how to think about the current moment:
  • We can’t be quiet now because these times are like the height of Jim Crow segregation in the 1940s and 1950s.
  • As academics, it’s uncomfortable for some of us to confront this moment because we are not used to consciously being involved in political struggles. Acknowledge your discomfort and privilege that may have shielded you from recognizing the political stakes of higher education before. What privilege are you willing to give up to confront the moment?
  • Acknowledge how the government’s attacks are rooted in white supremacy and other forms of oppression.
• On supporting legal defense orgs: Donate to legal organizations. Though legal defense can’t be our only strategy, the progressive legal organizations have rapidly mounted a defense against political attacks and are stretched thin. Some organizations to support: ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and Just Security.
• On ICE Raids:
  • We should get training on how to protect people in case of ICE raids, for instance, developing a trusted, verified warning system if ICE is on campus. Call Siembra’s hotline to report suspected ICE raids 336-543-0353. Confirm with Siembra if the ICE raid is real before sharing the information in your network.
  • Get the university to clarify what counts as public and private space on campus.
  • Create a network of people to provide refuge from ICE.
  • Join other local social organizations that have already been doing this work and learn from their expertise. Follow their lead.
  • Create a buddy system where people walk people who may be targeted home.
  • Direct action to interrupt people who ICE is kidnapping: filming, asking for signed warrant from judge, asking them to identify themselves.
  • Lock classroom doors to slow ICE from entering.
  • Recognize that some immigrant communities have their own networks of keeping informed about ICE. Yet, not all immigrants are plugged into those communities, especially international students.
• On organizing against funding cuts:
  • Stand up for each other because the government is cutting our funding regardless of our discipline
  • The grad workers union hired an independent auditor to study the financial health of UNC. The auditor found that UNC has plenty of money to operate and cuts aren’t warranted based on the funding they had before the federal government’s attacks.
• General ideas for organizing and next steps
  • Create a rapid response playbook if something happens on campus. For instance, staging mass walkouts.
  • Create regular meetings of task forces based on the various threats to higher education: ICE and immigration, resegregation and anti-DEI, attacks on protest especially pro-Palestinian protest, defunding of higher education, anti-trans attacks
  • Improve communication and coordination between faculty and student organizations on campus.
  • Return to analog technology like phone trees and in-person meetings.
  • Support different modes of resistance, including direct action.
  • Join other local organizations that doing this work such as NAACP and SURJ (a white anti-racist organization)
  • Do community care by checking in on how other people are doing and connecting with other people as well as self-care.
  • Create a secure way to communicate with each other.
  • Finds ways to proactively support students who have been visible in their support of Palestine against attack by the government.
  • Note: Be careful about putting vulnerable groups, like immigrants and/or people of color in danger when trying to help them. Ask how to best to helpful.

The AAUP has joined up with the AFT to sue the Trump administration over the unlawful funding cuts at Columbia:

This action challenges the Trump administration’s unlawful and unprecedented effort to overpower a university’s academic autonomy and control the thought, association, scholarship, and expression of its faculty and students.

The AAUP has also joined with the Middle East Studies Association, AAUP-NYU, AAUP Rutgers, and AAUP Harvard in a separate suit that alleges that the constitutional rights of US citizen faculty are being violated by the Trump Administration’s immigration policies which suppress the speech of non-citizen faculty and students:

Plaintiffs are associations whose members include thousands of faculty and students at universities across the country. They commence this action because the ideological-deportation policy, and the repressive climate it has engendered, has far-reaching implications for the expressive and associational rights of their U.S. citizen members, and for Plaintiffs themselves. The policy prevents or impedes Plaintiffs’ U.S. citizen members from hearing from, and associating with, their noncitizen students and colleagues.

Updates on both suits and other actions will be coming from the national leadership.

The UNC Chapel Hill AAUP chapter is hosting a UNC Faculty Town Hall on March 27th, from 5:30-7pm, at Toy Lounge in Dey Hall and on Zoom: https://unc.zoom.us/j/98329777299

UNC faculty are facing increasing political interference in our teaching, research, and university governance. This open forum will provide a space for faculty to share concerns, discuss challenges, and strategize collective action. Open to all UNC faculty—bring your questions and concerns!

Legal experts from UNC and the AAUP will be on hand to moderate questions and offer perspective. Join fellow faculty members for an open discussion on the issues affecting our work, our students, and the future of higher education.

Please circulate the flyer for the event widely. Thanks to member Chris Petsko for designing the flyer!