Faculty have reformed Princeton’s advocacy chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) as the University grapples with attacks on higher education by the Trump administration.
The AAUP is a nonprofit membership association of faculty and academic professionals, with advocacy, organizing, and collective bargaining chapters at campuses across the country. The move by Princeton faculty follows the establishment of AAUP chapters at Yale and Harvard in January 2025 and June 2024, respectively.
At the chapter’s first meeting on Tuesday, more than 50 faculty members met to discuss institutional neutrality, shared governance, and responses to the Trump administration’s recent attacks on higher education.
“The AAUP Princeton advocacy chapter is reconstituted to combat the unprecedented assault on higher education currently being waged at the federal level, and to fight against the forces targeting us, both nationally and locally in this very dire moment,” said President of the AAUP Princeton chapter Gayle Salamon, associate chair of the English department. The AAUP Princeton chapter is also led by Vice President Zahid R. Chaudhary, an English professor, and Secretary-Treasurer Karen Emmerich, a comparative literature professor.
Prior to its reconstitution this semester, the AAUP Princeton chapter did nominally exist, but had a very limited impact on University faculty. “The AAUP was moribund,” history professor Max Weiss said in an interview with the ‘Prince.’
The event featured a Q&A with Joan Scott, an emerita professor at the Institute for Advanced Study who is active in the national AAUP.
“I’ve never seen anything like the permanent crisis that we’re facing now,” Scott said.
Scott has been a member of the national AAUP’s committee on academic freedom and tenure since 1993. The committee helps to draft statements in response to higher education developments and crises.
Scott began by outlining the role of the AAUP in protecting higher education. According to her, the AAUP provides guidance for its chapters who need to “challenge” university administration, including having its national staff review faculty handbooks to confirm practices on academic freedom and governance. She gave an example of George Mason University, whose chapter reconstituted in 2016 and helped expose its administration’s private deals with the Koch Foundation to fund programs without faculty consultation.
One aspect Scott suggested AAUP could help with at Princeton is “demand[ing] more faculty consultation and input in what goes on,” noting that the University lacks faculty governance. For example, there is no Faculty Senate at Princeton — although faculty do engage with administrators alongside students and staff on the Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC).
“Shared governance … is no shared governance at all,” Weiss told the ‘Prince.’ “It is administrative rule with faculty flourishes across the top.”
Scott also explained that faculty can learn from actions at other AAUP chapters, which gives faculty a “collective identity [that] becomes larger than your university.” According to Scott, faculty members can read links and citations from other universities’ statements, which can become “a kind of template for other groups who might want to join the chorus of outrage being expressed at the untenable and dangerous set of actions undertaken by [the Trump administration].”
The event then turned to a Q&A. Many faculty members brought up the possibility of the faculty or University administration issuing a statement in condemnation of the Trump administration’s actions.
Dayton-Stockton Professor of History Gyan Prakash asked about the Princeton Council on Academic Freedom (PCAF), a group that believes that faculty members should “refrain from taking positions on political and social questions that do not directly bear on the university’s core functions.” In the fall, some PCAF members backed a proposal to prevent faculty from issuing collective political statements. The measure, which was postponed, is set to be voted on during a faculty meeting in April.
“I’m articulating the need for us to perhaps consider boycotting the meeting at which this committee is going to present a vote for us to disenfranchise ourselves and to organize alternatively,” history professor Vera S. Candiani said. “If they want to have that faculty-wide meeting where we’re supposed to vote to give up our collective voice … that’s what’s going to happen, they have more votes than we do.”
In response to a question about pressuring university presidents to issue a joint statement, Scott mentioned that the AAUP is attempting to get the American Association of Universities (AAU) to take a stronger stance against the Trump administration’s actions. The AAU’s board consists solely of various university presidents and chancellors. University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 is currently the chair of the AAU’s board.
Before and after the meeting, members of Princeton University Postdocs and Scholars-United Auto Workers (PUPS-UAW) passed out a petition calling for the administration to increase protections for faculty, students, and postdocs, including transition funds and legal assistance, according to postdocs Lacy Feigh and Judy Kim.
“It’s a first step towards a collective voice for faculty, a collective voice for organizing, a collective voice for mobilizing,” Candiani told the ‘Prince.’
The meeting dispersed in anticipation of a meeting of the AAUP Local 6741 of which the Princeton advocacy chapter is a member. The first official meeting of the AAUP will take place on April 9, 4:30pm.
Nikki Han is an assistant News editor and a contributing Features writer. She is from Sydney, Australia, and runs the Faculty, Graduate Students, and Alumni coverage area.
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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