When we stand together, we can protect the future of higher education — and help build a better, freer, more just and inclusive democracy and world.
Stand Together for Higher Ed is a national faculty-led movement to defend higher education, academic freedom, and democracy.
We organize across US colleges and universities—public and private, large and small—to build collective power in the face of growing political attacks on the core values of higher education. We are united by a shared commitment to free inquiry, institutional autonomy, and the role of universities in advancing knowledge, justice, and the common good.
Stand Together for Higher Ed equips faculty and staff to organize, through forming campus-based Stand Together Teams; passing Mutual Academic Defense Compact (MADC) resolutions and task forces; building cross-institutional alliances that can respond with strength and solidarity when academic freedom, research, teaching, or vulnerable campus communities come under threat; and helping policymakers and the public understand the vital role higher education plays in their communities.
We believe:
Higher education is essential to a free, pluralistic, and democratic society.
The current wave of censorship, surveillance, and government overreach demands an organized response.
Faculty have the responsibility—and the power—to act together. We welcome higher ed staff, a critical force in higher education across the US.
We work from the ground up. We act across institutions. We defend the freedom to think, teach, and learn.
Our Mission
To many outside the academy, the inner workings of higher education can be confusing. Its structures, values, and governance don’t always align with what people recognize from the private sector. What feels like common knowledge to faculty and staff may be unfamiliar to those working in policy, government, or other roles beyond higher education.
Part of our mission is to help bridge the gap. We believe higher education is a public good, something that benefits all of us. Its core purpose is not profit, but the advancement of knowledge, teaching, and research that improves lives and strengthens communities.
The U.S. has long been recognized for its world-class universities built on values like academic freedom and shared faculty governance. But those foundations are being weakened by political decisions made without a clear understanding of how higher education really works.
If we want smart policy and strong institutions, we need to tell the story of what make higher education unique, and why it is worth protecting. Without a clear understanding of higher education’s past and present, how can we make informed decisions about its future?
Telling the Story of Higher Ed
About Stand Together for Higher Ed
The Stand Together for Higher Ed movement began with a simple but urgent call: We must defend higher education as a public good — and we must do it together.
As political attacks on colleges and universities escalated in March 2025, a small group of faculty at UMass Amherst came together to sound the alarm with our Stand Together letter to the leadership of the 60 universities and colleges being targeted by the Department of Education. We saw that no single campus could stand alone against the forces working to undermine academic freedom, research, and open inquiry. We knew that silence would not protect us — only solidarity would.
At the same time, faculty from various universities and colleges formed the We Are Higher Ed collective, organizing a letter campaign to campus leaders, building community, and creating an online space for sharing critical news and movement information. Then faculty at Rutgers passed the first Mutual Academic Defense Compact resolution, providing a novel mechanism for coalition building across campuses.
From that first call to action, Stand Together for Higher Ed has become a national movement:
Building faculty coalitions across institutions, disciplines, and communities, through the creation of campus-level Stand Together for Higher Ed Teams
Organizing for mutual defense and collective action through mutual academic defense compacts and more,
Reaching out to, collaborating with, and learning from related organizations and movements like We Are Higher Ed, the MADC Consortium, and the AAUP,
Affirming that education, democracy, the rule of law, and the common good are worth standing up for.