The UNC-CH chapter of the AAUP strongly and unequivocally condemns the
targeting of international students and scholars.
In light of the April 8 revocation of six UNC student visas, we
call on UNC-CH to take concrete steps to support students and scholars
at risk. At a moment when the future of higher education and free
speech are in peril, our institution has obligations beyond doing no
harm. If we fail to protect international students and scholars, we
jeopardize the safety and academic freedom of all students and
scholars and the integrity of the university as a whole.
We therefore make the following demands of UNC-CH’s leaders:
- Maintain enrollment and allow continued study and resource access
for our international students and scholars whose visas have been
unjustly revoked.
- Provide and pay for legal counsel for those students and scholars
whose visas have been revoked.
- Work swiftly and affirmatively—through lawsuits, if necessary—to
stop further termination-without-due-process of legal statuses of
students and scholars.
- Allow international students and scholars to continue their
studies, research, and paid work, including teaching and research
assistantships and fellowships, remotely.
- Follow AAUP’s guidelines for general counsels to protect
student information.
- Avoid voluntary cooperation or information-sharing with Immigration
and Customs Enforcement, other federal agencies charged with
investigating students’ and scholars’ protected speech, revoking
visas, and/or facilitating deportations.
- Provide immediate notification to students and scholars of any
changes in their legal statuses and share reliable information in a
timely fashion with all international students and scholars.
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?
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
- 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.
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.