This Faculty Advocacy Group Has Doubled Under Trump 2.0

Ever since President Donald Trump returned to office and deluged colleges with federal policy changes, many faculty across North Carolina have felt uneasy about the state of affairs in higher education.

Belle Boggs, an English professor at North Carolina State University and the president of the statewide chapter of the American Association of University Professors, wants faculty to know that her group will stick up for them.

“Our role is to stand up for academic freedom, to fight for shared governance, and to insist on the importance of our role as champions for the public good,” Boggs told The Assembly.

Other faculty in North Carolina appear to agree: Boggs said the number of national dues-paying members in the statewide AAUP conference has more than doubled since the beginning of the year, to 570. Many of them joined after Trump’s inauguration. “And I hope we’ll double again by the end of the year,” she said.

Boggs spoke with The Assembly about how the North Carolina AAUP conference is navigating the second Trump presidency and planning to support faculty members this academic year.

How did you get involved with the AAUP and become president of the statewide group?

I got involved with what became the AAUP chapter at N.C. State during the initial wave of the COVID crisis…we were very concerned that coming back into those public spaces was not going to be safe. So there was a big effort outside of AAUP…coming together and speaking to our chancellors across the UNC System. 

This was a group within the UNC System that allowed us to see that we could work together and have a voice and that that was going to be very necessary. We were moving into a different time—and I think we had already moved into a different time—and it was very clear that this was life or death, not only for vulnerable people, but also for the university.

From there, I have just been mostly a rank-and-file member at my N.C. State chapter. When our wonderful president of the state conference of AAUP, Jay Smith, who teaches at UNC-Chapel Hill, decided that he needed to step down after a long-term stint as president, the group of state-level executive leaders asked me if I would be willing to be considered for leadership. And I said OK, knowing that it would be challenging, because this was after the election, but not knowing exactly what that challenge would look like.

What has the statewide AAUP chapter seen in response to President Trump’s higher education agenda?

The AAUP and AFT [American Federation of Teachers] together are the largest higher education union in the country. And as an AAUP conference that also offers its members AFT membership, we are growing daily. We have added new chapters. We are in the process of adding still more chapters.

We are being contacted by faculty who have concerns, and we are responding. That is part of what we do is we try to provide resources and help. … So we are there for higher education, and so we hope that whatever happens this fall and beyond, people will see us and know that we’re there to offer the help that we have to give.

This summer, you attended the national conference for the AAUP. What was the environment there and how are others thinking about this moment?

I was excited going in, but I was worried that there would be a feeling of fear, and a sense of doom and negativity. But there is none of that. The people who came together were reminded that we are all knowledge workers and that our work is very important. And in fact, when you look at what the administration is doing and who they’re putting in place to accomplish some of the things that they’re trying to accomplish, we actually have better-than-even odds of coming out ahead.

We have law professors; we have doctors; we have epidemiologists; we have journalists; we have historians; we have teachers; we have healthcare workers; we have nurses. Every field you can think of, we have the best of that field within our group. We’re also a very old group, so we’ve been through some very bad times. The AAUP as an institution has been through McCarthyism.

There was some talk of the fact that this is actually the worst challenge that higher education has ever faced in the United States. And that is scary, but the energy within our sessions and within our plenary conversations was extremely energetic—sometimes angry, but always determined. The work that people are doing in different, very challenging spaces all across the United States is really inspiring.

Many people have been following the Trump administration’s battles with specific schools, like Harvard and Columbia. How are you thinking about other institutions’ approaches and the applicable lessons for North Carolina?

I think that all AAUP members and most faculty in higher education are looking at Columbia and noticing that the bullying never stops, the demands do not stop. There is no way to bend the knee and ever stand up straight again.

So we very closely are watching the different lawsuits, AAUP v. Rubio, and also the suit with Harvard that is in court right now. [Editor’s note: A judge ruled in Harvard’s favor in September, but the Trump administration says it will appeal.] I think a lot of people were very inspired by how Harvard stood up, and by the chancellor of UVA [University of Virginia] and his principled decision [to step down]. But we want Harvard to continue to stand strong. Everyone wants that.

We’ve seen Big 10 schools and others push for coalitions to defend their institutions. Are there talks about doing something like that in the South?

Absolutely. A mutual academic defense compact is a really great strategy that has happened…saying that we will stand together. We’re going to pool our resources. We are going to make sure that we’re not picked off, university by university, or program by program, or college by college.…But you also have to have the resources in place.

So what we have been working on this summer very hard at AAUP, with a team of almost entirely volunteers in North Carolina…We are working on setting up, establishing resources so that universities, but also individual faculty members and academic professionals, understand that there is some muscle behind this group, and there is some meaning behind the promises that we make.

We do have folks who work on rapid research. We do have folks who reach out to media and organize those conversations. You’ve probably seen AAUP in the media more lately, and that is because we are actively doing that work. But we are also setting up a legal hotline that will be dedicated to protecting the First Amendment rights of faculty members within the state of North Carolina who face challenges this fall and beyond. So we want to say that we have resources before we have a compact.