Resources
ACT BY SEPTEMBER 21: ACCREDITATION
Despite widespread outcry, the Department of Education has moved forward on its proposed rule governing higher-education accreditation. Public comments are due September 21.
STHE has submitted a comment focused specifically on the shared-governance implications of the proposed rule, including the risks to faculty authority over curriculum, academic standards, and research.
The Alliance for Higher Education has prepared an excellent guide and commenting template:
Alliance information and commenting template
Submit a comment to the Department of Education
STHE is encouraging members—and especially faculty senates—to submit institution-specific comments describing how particular accreditation provisions could affect their students, faculty, programs, and governance structures.
Reclaim the Narrative: A Faculty & Staff Training Webinar
Higher education is under coordinated attack, from funding cuts and DEI bans to assaults on tenure, free speech, and the safety of international scholars and students. Our individual stories of how our work in higher education makes a difference are the most powerful antidote to the misinformation campaign against higher education. Truth is resistance. Every story we can share with the public pushes back against false narratives that paint higher ed as elitist and broken.
The Reclaim the Narrative Training Webinar equips you and your colleagues with practical tools to tell your story and amplify the value of higher ed in public life. You’ll learn how to:
Write powerful op-eds and letters to the editor
Use social media to reach wider audiences
Prepare for media interviews with confidence
Adapt these materials to host Reclaim the Narrative workshops on your own campus
The materials linked will help you host your own Reclaim the Narrative event on your campus. Together, we can reclaim the story of higher education as a public good essential to democracy.
Our Toolkit
Our toolkit offers a simple, flexible roadmap for launching a local faculty and staff organizing team, passing a mutual academic defense compact, and forming the structures needed to protect your community.
Whether you’re just getting started or already organizing, these tools will help you:
Bring together a core team of faculty & staff as a Stand Together Team
Pass a Mutual Academic Defense Compact (MADC) resolution through your faculty governance body if your campus climate permits
Form an official Campus Task Force, including administrators, faculty, and staff, to implement mutual defense compacts if possible on your campus
Use your independent Stand Together Team to monitor the progress of the Campus Task Force, offer encouragement, create faculty and staff connections, and build movement power and energy on campus. If a MADC Campus Task Force cannot be created, focus on your Stand Together Team
Stay connected to a national movement fighting for the future of higher education
Responses to the Compact for Excellence in
Higher Education
In an effort to easily access information and track responses from organizations and higher ed institutions across the country, STHE has compiled a list of responses made to the Compact so far. We will update this list regularly (a more extensive web page is in the works), but if you have additional information that may be helpful, please let us know.