How STHE is Responding in 2026
Building Campus-Level Stand Together Teams
Our core strategy is helping faculty and staff build organized, cross-departmental campus teams that can act collectively when academic freedom, shared governance, or institutional autonomy are threatened.
In 2026, we are prioritizing new teams in vulnerable, support for existing teams facing escalating political pressure, and cross-campus connections so institutions are not left isolated when attacks occur.
Expanding Reclaim the Narrative
Attacks on higher education are being fueled by a distorted public narrative: that universities are corrupt, ideological, wasteful, and hostile to the public interest.
Our Reclaim the Narrative work trains and supports faculty and staff to tell accurate, human stories about what higher education actually does, engage local and national media, write op-eds, and speak publicly and confidently against bad-faith attacks.
Strengthening Academic Freedom and Shared Governance on Campuses
Too many institutions are discovering —too late —that their governance systems are weak, outdated, or easily overridden.
In 2026, STHE is launching new efforts to help campuses assess vulnerabilities, strengthen governance policies and structures, clarify lines of authority and decision-making, and learn from peer institutions that have successfully resisted political intrusion. For now, STHE members or campus teams can:
Assess: look at your institution’s bylaws and see how and where academic freedom is written in. Some institutions have relatively strong language, others could be strengthened.
Propose revisions: If your bylaws have thin or scant mention of academic freedom protections, work with your faculty governance body to revise bylaws.
Listen: Solicit broader campus concerns about academic freedom; you might field a survey to assess faculty & staff concerns at this moment.
Advocate: Encourage your colleagues and leadership that in campus messaging, institutional leaders should signal academic freedom as a key priority, emphasizing its meaning and essential value to the work that you and your colleagues do.
Recognize: Work with your institution to honor instructors who “walk the walk” on academic freedom for the rest of the campus in representing contending views in their classes on matters of public controversy.
Educate: work together to develop basic shared literacy around academic freedom on your campus; you might propose to sponsor a public education forum or panel on academic freedom in the coming months. The AAUP has a range of resources through its Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom. And some institutions, like UMass Amherst, have developed public resources as well.
Lobby: Work with your state’s elected representatives to formally recognize academic freedom in the governance of public higher education in state law (for example, California and New York State already do this).
