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(Note: As a follow-up action to this statement, AAUP-Penn has asked OREI to be present at an upcoming meeting, open to all members, to hear and respond to questions raised. Current members will receive additional scheduling details.)

As the executive committee of the University of Pennsylvania’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP-Penn), we write to express our concern that the practices of Penn’s Office of Religious and Ethnic Interests—formerly “Inclusion”—(OREI) or Title VI office may infringe upon academic freedom and may themselves constitute unlawful discrimination. Given OREI’s stated intent to work in partnership across the Penn community, we write publicly to give the office the opportunity to clarify and modify its procedures to ensure the transparency, consistency, and fairness essential to carrying out the office’s mission.

The 1964 Civil Rights Act was a crowning achievement of the Black freedom movement in the United States, and it is worth remembering its origins and purpose. The law banned a host of discriminatory practices that had barred African Americans from decent jobs, schools, hospitals, restaurants, and other institutions serving the public. Among the law’s provisions, Title VI bars discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs that receive federal funding; since 2004, federal guidance has also interpreted Title VI to prohibit discrimination on the basis of religion, protecting students who are “Jewish, Israeli, Muslim, Arab, Sikh, South Asian, Hindu, Palestinian, or any other faith or ancestry.”

Because the Civil Rights Act outlawed discrimination on the basis of many factors, it opened doors not only to African Americans but to many other racialized groups in the United States, as well as women of many racial and ethnic backgrounds. It made the United States a more just and egalitarian society, it improved the quality of higher education, and the AAUP has consistently supported the law, arguing that antidiscrimination measures must go hand-in-hand with the protection of academic freedom. As explained in a 2023 statement from AAUP, “equity and nondiscrimination will not be achieved if freedom of speech and academic freedom are compromised or legislated out of existence.” It is the free exchange and exploration of ideas, including those that are unpopular or that some might find offensive, that enables universities to contribute to societal progress.

Today, the Trump administration is weaponizing the 1964 Civil Rights Act to authorize discrimination, censorship, and violations of academic freedom. As the AAUP has noted, corroborated by senior U.S. district court judge William G. Young in the recent AAUP v. Rubio ruling, the administration relies on an overly broad and vague definition of antisemitism that falsely includes criticism of the Israeli government and the war in Gaza, which chills research, teaching, and debate. As Judge Allison D. Burroughs found in Harvard case, the federal government “used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities.” The Trump administration is, in unprecedented ways, repurposing Title VI to control what can be taught and studied in the United States; roll back the gains of the civil rights movement; and infringe on the rights to speak, assemble, and protest. 

Here at Penn, the OREI was established as the university’s Title VI office in December 2024 amid a climate of government interference into university procedures. We are concerned that Penn’s own Title VI office may be responding to these external pressures in a manner that risks chilling faculty speech and potentially discriminating against faculty in violation of the law.

Over the last several months, AAUP-Penn has received reports from faculty and students with whom OREI has initiated meetings. In several cases, AAUP-Penn representatives have accompanied colleagues, at their request, to these meetings. Based on our observations, it appears that Penn’s Title VI office initiates meetings that may be based on unfounded accusations of antisemitism in a faculty member’s research, teaching, or extramural speech. While the below includes examples from specific cases, shared with permission, our intention is to illuminate broader trends, not to reopen any individual case.

Examples of actions by faculty that have prompted OREI meetings include: assigning a pedagogically-relevant reading about conflict in Palestine in a course; conducting peer-reviewed, scholarly research that referenced a third-party resource that a complainant claimed, without evidence, promoted hatred of Israel and of Jews in the United States; being photographed at an off-campus event wearing a stole bearing the Palestinian flag; and political posts on personal social media accounts. In some cases, these complaints originated in campaigns of targeted harassment orchestrated by groups outside the university, raising concerns that the Title VI office is being used as an instrument of harassment. During these meetings, faculty members, who in some cases had already been subject to targeted harassment, felt that they were expected to take unsubstantiated accusations of antisemitism at face value and to express contrition or offer some concession to their unidentified accuser, or face the possibility of disciplinary action. We have also received reports that OREI has initiated meetings with members of the Penn community based on the university administration’s surveillance of their social media, without having received any complaint, and has warned them preemptively not to criticize the Israeli government.

The Title VI office has said that they do not investigate complaints that come from outside the university, but even if this is true, it has not prevented targeted harassment campaigns from turning into Title VI investigations at Penn. It appears that members of the Penn community may have responded to or participated in targeted harassment campaigns by bringing their accusations to OREI, in effect laundering external harassment into internal expressions of concern, and prompting OREI to initiate meetings with faculty based on the fact that they are being harassed online. From our observations, those meetings or investigations have not resulted in discipline, suggesting the weakness of the accusations, but they have put immense strain on members of the university already experiencing harassment and pose threats to the academic freedom of all faculty and students.

Threats to Academic Freedom

Even when meetings do not result in further investigation or disciplinary action, summoning faculty members every time the office receives a complaint, however unsubstantiated, chills faculty members’ research, teaching, and intramural and extramural speech. These meetings can induce faculty members to modify their scholarship and teaching in order to avoid further investigation and possible discipline. For instance, in one meeting, a faculty member whose peer-reviewed research was subject to a complaint was pressured to make a modification to the presentation of that research although their work had the support of their colleagues and dean.

We ask that OREI leadership publicly address the following questions:

  1. Does the Title VI office initiate meetings with members of the university every time it receives a complaint about them? If not, what criteria does the office use to distinguish between complaints that it pursues and those that it does not?
  2. How many complaints has the Title VI office received from people outside the university and from members of the university, and how many of each of those complaints have led to meetings? How many meetings have been initiated without any complaint?
  3. What policies and procedures does the Title VI office have in place to prevent external complainants from influencing internal processes? What policies and procedures does the office have in place to prevent itself from being used as an instrument of campaigns of targeted harassment?
  4. When OREI receives a complaint that originates in a campaign of targeted harassment, or when it learns that a member of the university has been subject to targeted harassment, what forms of support does it offer? How does it protect the academic freedom of all from the chilling effect of targeted harassment?
  5. What training do OREI staff members receive on the principles of academic freedom, academic due process, and shared governance? What do they understand to be the rights of faculty and students under the principles of academic freedom, and what do they understand to be the limits of OREI’s authority in relation to the protection of academic freedom?

Procedural Fairness, Due Process, and Adherence to University Policies

Based on faculty members’ experiences and our observations, AAUP-Penn is concerned that OREI’s procedures appear to be inconsistent, opaque, and in some cases, unfair, intimidating, or unauthorized by the university’s written policies.

  • In the cases that have come to our attention, the faculty members received emails urgently calling for a meeting with an OREI representative, with no information provided about the topic of the meeting or their rights. In one case, during the meeting, the faculty member and accompanying AAUP-Penn member had to ask repeatedly for any information on the substance of the complaint. 
  • One faculty member was denied their request to be accompanied by a colleague, while in another case, a colleague from AAUP-Penn was allowed to attend but not to speak or ask any questions. 
  • OREI has typically distinguished its first meetings with faculty members from investigations: the first meeting may result in an investigation depending on what the faculty member says. Yet in one case, a faculty member asked to postpone their meeting in order to allow them time to obtain counsel. OREI responded by escalating the case from a meeting to a formal investigation, despite the fact that there had been no changes to the facts of the case. It appears that OREI used the investigation itself as a form of punishment and intimidation when a faculty member asserted their rights.
  • In several cases, OREI questioned the faculty member’s supervisors and colleagues about a complaint without notifying the faculty member themselves of any official investigation, and possibly before any investigation commenced.
  • OREI investigations do not appear to follow regular or transparent  procedures. In one case, OREI called in a faculty member who had been subject to targeted harassment for over a year. In the meeting, OREI staff invoked previous irregular and opaque investigations of this colleague that had no basis in the Faculty Handbook. Although the faculty member had never been found to have violated any policy, OREI invoked these investigations as if they showed a pattern of inappropriate conduct rather than a pattern of targeted harassment.
  • In its public relations, OREI has emphasized its role in providing education, mediation, and conflict resolution. While attorneys, including former prosecutors, may have investigatory and fact-finding skills useful in carrying out a Title VI office’s mission, procedural safeguards are critical to ensure fairness and transparency, especially given the potentially harmful consequences to faculty members against whom complaints are lodged. Faculty members have reported concern that complaints against them were not subject to critical evaluation, and faculty members facing unsubstantiated  accusations of antisemitism felt pressured to express contrition or make changes to their research, teaching, or extramural speech, or face escalating investigation and/or discipline.
  • Establishing transparent procedures for reporting to the Penn community on the Title VI office’s activities, and for informing faculty, staff, and students of our rights to request and receive information from the office would be an important step toward ensuring fair treatment in keeping with the office’s mission.   

We ask that OREI leadership publicly address the following questions:

  1. What rights do members of the university have in Title VI meetings, investigations, and other processes? Where are those rights and procedures published?
  2. Do OREI procedures authorize its staff to interview other members of the university about a complaint before notifying the subject of the complaint that they are being investigated, or before opening an investigation?
  3. Do OREI procedures authorize its staff to invoke or consider past accusations against or investigations of a member of the university (whether or not those investigations were formally authorized by the Faculty Handbook) that are not part of the complaint?
  4. What is the job description of the former prosecutor in the Title VI office? What decisions do they make or participate in? What is their relationship to the Office of the General Counsel?
  5. When and in what format will OREI formally report to Penn faculty, staff, and students on its activity?

Privacy

In 2024, the Penn administration voluntarily turned over personally identifying information about faculty members to a Congressional committee that made unsubstantiated accusations of antisemitism. Since then, other universities have followed suit. UC Berkeley, for example, recently provided the federal government with names of university community members investigated for antisemitism, regardless of the source or reliability of the complaint or the outcome of the investigations. The AAUP has warned against such practices.

We ask that OREI leadership publicly address the following questions:

  1. In light of OREI’s statement that they investigate every report, are all meetings defined as investigations for recordkeeping, reporting, or other purposes?
  2. What records, and what personally identifying information, are produced in the course of OREI’s activities, when OREI receives and evaluates complaints, when it meets with a member of the university, when it conducts investigations, and when it makes recommendations to the central administration?
  3. What policies and procedures govern the preservation, destruction, and transmission of OREI’s documents? What policies and procedures does OREI implement to protect the privacy, including personally identifying information, of Penn community members?

The Use of Overly Broad and Vague Definitions of Antisemitism

All of the cases that have been reported to us involve complaints against members of the university accused of antisemitism or criticism of Israel, which were sometimes conflated. In one meeting where an OREI staff member said that a social media post could be interpreted as antisemitic, they were asked what definition of antisemitism OREI used, since the post did not include any generalizations or stereotypes about Jews. The OREI representative responded that Penn has not adopted a definition of antisemitism, but that OREI must respect that members of the university might use different definitions. Those various definitions appear to include the IHRA definition, which the AAUP has identified as a threat to academic freedom. If OREI acts on reports made on the basis of the IHRA definition, the office is in effect accepting that definition. The Title VI office cannot adjudicate cases based on the definition of discrimination used by the complainant; as explained by the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, “the offensiveness of a particular expression as perceived by some students, standing alone, is not a legally sufficient basis to establish a hostile environment under Title VI.”

We ask that OREI leadership publicly address the following questions:

  1. What definition of antisemitism does OREI use, and for what purposes?
  2. When OREI receives a complaint of antisemitism that appears to be founded on the IHRA definition of antisemitism, does it initiate a meeting with the member of the university who is the object of the complaint?
  3. How many and what percentage of OREI’s meetings, and how many and what percentage of its investigations, have been based on complaints about alleged antisemitism? On what definition of antisemitism were each of those complaints, and OREI’s responses to them, based? How many of those complaints have conflated antisemitism with political criticism of the Israeli government, the war in Gaza, or Zionism as a political project? How many of those complaints have conflated antisemitism with expressions of support or sympathy for Palestinian people?

Possible Unlawful Discrimination by OREI

The reports that we have received come almost exclusively from faculty who are Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and/or Black. We are concerned that the Title VI office may be subjecting members of protected classes to disproportionate surveillance, interrogation, investigation, or threats of discipline, and therefore that the Title VI office itself may be discriminating on the basis of race, color, national origin, or religion.

We ask that OREI leadership publicly address the following questions:

  1. Will the Title VI office release data on the race, color, national origin, and religion of members of the university (a) called in for meetings and (b) subject to investigations?
  2. Has OREI received or investigated any reports of anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, or anti-Palestinian racism? If no such reports have been received, what steps has OREI taken to earn the trust of Penn community members subject to all forms of discrimination protected by Title VI? How is OREI working to ensure that its processes are not used as a vehicle for anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, and anti-Palestinian racism?

Penn must not engage in anticipatory obedience by censoring community members whose intellectual work or extramural speech may make them ideological targets. It must resist the attempts of politicians, donors, and trustees to make the 1964 Civil Rights Act an instrument of discrimination and censorship. Combatting antisemitism, upholding democracy, and protecting free speech and academic freedom are intertwined. Harassing, surveilling, intimidating, and punishing members of the University community for research, teaching, and extramural speech based on overly broad definitions of antisemitism does nothing to combat antisemitism, but it can perpetuate anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, and anti-Palestinian racism, muzzle political criticism of the Israeli government by people of any background, and create a climate of fear and self-censorship that threatens the academic freedom of all faculty and students. As 550 US rabbis and cantors stated in a recent public letter, “We cannot allow the fight against antisemitism to be twisted into a wedge issue, used to justify policies that target immigrants and other minorities, suppress free speech, or erode democratic norms.”

AAUP-Penn will continue to monitor reports related to OREI, working with campus partners to ensure that the vital work of preventing and responding to discrimination based on race, color, and national origin proceeds in ways that apply equitably to all members of the faculty community, adhere to internal grievance and complaint procedures required by the Faculty Handbook, and uphold Penn’s obligation to protect academic freedom. We look forward to the Office’s response to these questions.

AAUP-Penn Executive Committee Statement on OREIDownload
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October 8, 2025

We stand with graduate research and teaching assistants in GETUP-UAW in their campaign for their first contract with the University of Pennsylvania. As faculty, we value the essential work they do as researchers and teachers, and we affirm their right to organize and bargain collectively for a fair contract under the 1935 National Labor Relations Act—a law that also requires the Penn administration to bargain in good faith. In the face of the Trump administration’s latest extortionary threats to this university and to all faculty, staff, and students, GETUP’s efforts to win a democratic voice at work and an enforceable contract that guarantees their rights are all the more important. 

GETUP’s contract proposals would make Penn a better place to teach, research, and learn. Members of the union are negotiating for three main goals: protections against discrimination, support for international graduate workers, and fair pay and benefits, including six years of funding, comprehensive health coverage, and a living wage (Penn’s $39,425 stipend falls substantially below the living wage threshold in Philadelphia). The terms that GETUP proposes are not only equitable and just, but they are also now standard at peer institutions, and they would make Penn’s graduate programs more competitive, helping faculty recruit strong applicants. 

GETUP has been in negotiations with Penn’s central administration for a year. Disappointingly, administrators and their costly antiunion lawyers have stonewalled at the bargaining table: they have only reached agreements on a third of articles and have not responded to any of GETUP’s economic proposals. At other universities, graduate unions facing intransigent administrations have understandably voted to strike, and today, graduate workers at Penn are signing a strike pledge to prepare for a possible strike vote here. 

It is entirely within the Penn administration’s power to avoid a strike by bargaining in good faith and settling a contract. Yet instead of doing so, Penn administrators are preparing for the possibility of a strike by circulating anti-union messaging to faculty, instructing us to make “teaching continuity” plans to break a potential strike. We urge all our colleagues to consult this guidance, written by Penn faculty for Penn faculty, on what strikebreaking entails and the reasons that faculty absolutely should not do it. When administrators ask you to be a strikebreaker—by teaching a striking worker’s sections or labs, doing their grading, assigning their work to someone else, or reporting strikers’ names to facilitate illegal retaliation—they are asking you to take sides against the RAs and TAs whose work is essential to your own, compromising your integrity, your professional relationships, and your ability to recruit graduate students for years to come. When administrators tell you that strikebreaking will help your undergraduates, they want you to ignore the plain fact that the best way to ensure teaching continuity is to stand in solidarity with graduate workers today, sending the message that the administration must arrive at a fair contract now. 
If GETUP members vote to strike in order to win a fair contract, they will have AAUP-Penn’s support and solidarity. 

AAUP-Penn GETUP Solidarity Statement – October 2025Download
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UPDATE (October 7): This statement and the accompanying petition urging the administration to say no to the Compact are co-sponsored by GETUP-UAW and RAPUP-UAW. All members of the campus community are encouraged to sign the petition and to come together on October 17th at 3pm to stand publicly against the Compact (details forthcoming).

October 2, 2025

We were alarmed to read reports that Penn has been “invited” to sign a so-called “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” by the federal government, and that failing to do so would jeopardize federal funding. Compliance would be subject to ongoing review by the Department of Justice, and insufficient obedience would result in a loss of access to student loans, grant programs, federal contracts, funding for research, approval of visas, and tax exemption. When an invitation is accompanied by consequences for not accepting it, it is in fact a threat, not an invitation. Decisions about hiring, tuition, admissions, grades, and discipline are made according to shared governance procedures that are essential to the independence and academic freedom of the University. Penn must not allow itself to be threatened into ceding its self-determination. Whatever the consequences of refusal, agreeing would threaten the very mission of the University.

This attempt at coercion is just one of the many examples of intensifying political interference into higher education. The compact characterizes efforts to improve diversity as discriminatory, a continuation of other efforts to undermine the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It makes other demands about admission, like requiring the use of standardized tests and limiting the admission of international students, that directly flout the shared governance rights of faculty. It redefines sex and gender according to rigid binaries incompatible with both science and Penn’s values; forcing members of the University to accept these definitions would be a violation of our academic freedom. Finally, it instructs universities to ensure a “vibrant marketplace of ideas on campus.” Given recent government actions to suppress the expression of ideas with which it disagrees, such as the unconstitutional policy of arresting, detaining, and deporting noncitizen students and faculty members for their pro-Palestinian advocacy, this can only be interpreted as a thinly-veiled attempt to restrict academic freedom to those who express government-approved views, defeating the very purpose of academic freedom and of higher education as a whole.

While the loss of federal funding would threaten Penn’s ability to perform its vital education and research work, agreeing to this compact would not forestall that outcome. As the AAUP-Penn executive committee warned when the Penn administration became the first in the country to make a closed-door, secretly negotiated deal with the Trump administration, a concession to threats will simply embolden the Trump administration to come back for more. Funding cuts are also not insurmountable. For example, the University could temporarily raise the rate of spending on its endowment, as it has done before in times of crisis, while collaborating with other institutions to sue for the restoration of unconstitutionally withheld funds. Sacrificing our values, on the other hand, would irreparably damage the fabric of our university. Penn’s Latin motto, Leges Sine Moribus Vanae, is usually translated to “Laws Without Morals are Useless.” It is time to put that principle into practice.

AAUP-Penn EC Statement on CompactDownload
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July 7, 2025

Larry Jameson, President
John L. Jackson, Jr., Provost
Marta Bartholomew, Director of Postdoctoral Affairs

Dear President Jameson and Colleagues,

We write on behalf of the University of Pennsylvania chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP-Penn) to ask that you implement a policy of neutrality in all union organizing drives at Penn. In particular, we ask you to end the anti-union campaign against Research Associates and Postdocs United at Penn (RAPUP), take down the anti-union website https://facts4pennpostdocs.org/, and respect the results of the upcoming union election on July 16 and 17.

The website presents talking points that have been part of anti-union campaigns in the United States since the 1970s, crafted by anti-union law firms and consultants. When workers launch organizing drives in the United States, over three-quarters of employers hire such firms to design anti-union campaigns for them.[1] Penn currently uses the law firm Cozen O’Connor in its campaign against postdocs and RAs.

Anti-union campaigns target workers with a standard set of messages, delivered through phone calls, text messages, emails, websites, mailers, posters, and meetings with supervisors:

  • They depict unions as third parties that supposedly interfere with workers’ individual relationships with their employers. In fact, unions are organizations of workers themselves. Workers make up the bargaining committees that negotiate contracts, they vote on contracts, and they participate in grievance procedures as stewards. Workers organize unions precisely because individuals do not have effective negotiating power with large institutions. Collective bargaining is a way to make workers’ voices heard.
  • They warn workers about union dues, implying that they might be worse off if they form a union. This is not a credible argument. Workers do not pay dues until they vote to ratify their first contract, and workers have no reason to ratify contracts that leave them worse off. Furthermore, according to the US Department of Labor, unionized workers in the United States earn 18% more than non-union workers do;[2] union dues are generally less than 2% of wages.
  • They issue threats, often couched as expressions of concern. For instance, employers warn workers that even if they vote to form a union, it might take them years to negotiate a first contract, and the terms of that contract might fall short of their expectations—they might even be worse than their current terms of employment. These are threats indicating the employer intends to fight workers in contract negotiations.
  • They warn that unions will impose rigid rules inappropriate to their workplace. This argument presents a distorted picture of union contracts, which take many forms. Unionized workers, including those in US universities, have long negotiated contracts protecting some forms of flexibility while establishing guarantees that workers need. This argument also obscures the fact that workers in non-union settings are already subject to rules; having a union simply allows them a voice in determining and enforcing those rules. Finally, this argument loses its luster when one realizes that all employers make it: big-box stores, manufacturers, and institutions of higher education all claim that they are uniquely flexible workplaces where unions could not operate.
  • They present positive workplace policies as evidence that workers don’t need unions. This obscures the fact that current policies are often products of past mobilizations. For instance, in recent decades, union organizing drives by postdocs and research associates have led universities nationwide to improve pay and benefit packages. Penn’s website now presents those improvements as evidence that organizing is needless or destructive.
  • They advise workers who signed cards to change their minds and vote no in the election. They tell workers to give management one more chance.

All of these talking points appear on the website above. We understand that the university administration is deploying other standard anti-union tactics as well. Lawyers from Cozen O’Connor representing Penn challenged the right of postdocs and research associates to organize before the NLRB, based on the false argument that they are only “temporary” employees.[3] The NLRB rightly rejected this argument. In addition, Penn has illegally deployed the Temporary Standards and Procedures for Campus Events and Demonstrations—now in effect for over a year—to repress union gatherings on campus in violation of federal labor law. Under the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, workers have the right to engage in concerted activity—that is, collective action to address shared workplace concerns—and on college campuses, concerted activity routinely takes the form of rallying on campus.[4] Yet on June 12, when RAPUP members gathered for a peaceful demonstration at the Button, they were forced off campus. The Penn administration knows that such measures are illegal: in August 2024, Penn security prevented medical residents in CIR/SEIU from gathering in the courtyard of Pennsylvania Hospital for a union event. This violation of federal labor law resulted in an Unfair Labor Practice charge against Penn.[5]

These messages and tactics have no place in our community. Their fundamental purpose is to interfere with workers’ right to organize, guaranteed in the 1935 National Labor Relations Act. That law established that the decision to form a union—or not to do so—belongs to workers themselves. It is theirs alone to make; employers do not get a vote in certification elections, and their views are simply irrelevant. Penn’s anti-union campaigns convey an unwillingness to accept those facts. They aim to sow doubt, fear, and confusion among workers to sway the outcome of elections. Their legal maneuvers seek to strip workers of their right to organize and prevent an election from happening at all.

We further object to recent attempts to enlist faculty members in anti-union activity. The anti-union website has been shared with faculty in a clear attempt to instrumentalize our relationships of mutual respect and trust with postdocs and research associates. In setting us up to deliver intimidating and misleading messages, they threaten to corrode those very relationships and compromise our integrity.

Finally, we object to these anti-union tactics because they are inconsistent with the research and teaching mission of the university. Paying law firms and consultants to fight our own postdocs and research associates is not a productive use of Penn’s resources in any situation, and it is particularly egregious given that Penn has cited federal funding cuts as the reason for hiring freezes, cuts to graduate training, contract nonrenewals for non-tenure-track faculty, and other austerity measures that compromise the university’s core mission. As over 1,100 of us demanded this spring, the administration must use its resources to uphold research and teaching, and to uphold the rights of all members of the Penn community; it should not use those resources to disenfranchise our own colleagues. Nor is Penn’s anti-union campaign a rational defense of institutional interests. The improved working conditions that unionization might yield would not harm the university; rather, they would make Penn a better place for all of us to teach, learn, and conduct research.

The proper posture of an employer during an organizing drive is neutrality: management should simply step back and allow workers to make their decision. Neutrality not only respects the original spirit of the National Labor Relations Act, but it lays the groundwork for a productive, mutually beneficial relationship with a union should workers vote to form one.

For all these reasons, we ask that you take down the https://facts4pennpostdocs.org/ website, end the anti-union campaign under way, and refrain from such activity in the future. We also ask that you respect the results of the upcoming RAPUP union election. We look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Executive Committee, AAUP-Penn

[1] John Logan, “The Union Avoidance Industry in the United States,” British Journal of Industrial Relations vol. 44, no. 4 (Dec. 2006): 651-675; Lane Windham, Knocking on Labor’s Door: Union Organizing in the 1970s and the Roots of a New Economic Divide (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017).

[2] US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, News Release USDL-23-071, January 19, 2023.

[3] NLRB Case 04-RC-364372, https://www.nlrb.gov/case/04-RC-364372

[4] https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/employees/concerted-activity

[5] “Penn Med residents seek unfair labor practice charge after attempt to deliver petition,” Daily Pennsylvanian, September 2, 2024, https://www.thedp.com/article/2024/09/penn-medicine-union-rally-petition-mahoney-krajewski

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We stand with our colleagues in Research Associates and Postdocs United at Penn (RAPUP) as they prepare to win their union in the upcoming NLRB election on July 16 and 17. As faculty, we know that postdocs and research associates play essential roles in advancing the research and teaching mission of the university. In building a union together, they are organizing to make Penn a better, fairer, and more democratic institution. They are part of a growing movement of higher education workers, including Penn’s graduate research and teaching assistants in GETUP, organizing with the UAW to improve their working conditions, and by extension, the University as a whole. All of us who do the work that sustains Penn’s research and educational mission deserve a meaningful voice in institutional policies that affect our lives. All of us deserve working conditions that are equitable. Unions are essential institutions that provide a democratic voice at work and the capacity to win real change for the better. We stand in solidarity with postdocs and research associates in their efforts to achieve those goals.

Unfortunately but unsurprisingly, the University administration has responded to RAPUP’s organizing drive by launching an anti-union campaign, following the same playbook it has used to fight recent union organizing drives by Penn museum workers, medical residents, resident advisors, graduate research and teaching assistants, and librarians. Designed by the anti-union law firm Cozen O’Connor, the fundamental purpose of these expensive campaigns is to sow fear and confusion to sway the outcome of union elections, and to interfere with workers’ legal right to organize.

In its efforts to suppress RAPUP’s unionization efforts, the Penn administration first attempted to strip postdocs and research associates of their right to organize at all: they argued to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that these workers were supposedly “temporary” employees ineligible to unionize. In a recent hearing, the National Labor Relations Board rebuked the administration’s arguments, clearly affirming that postdocs and research assistants are employees with the right to unionize. Second, the administration has created an anti-union website and circulated it by email and text to postdocs, research associates, and faculty. As RAPUP’s website makes clear, Penn’s website is laden with misleading and intimidating claims; it is in no way a trustworthy source of information. By sending faculty this material, the administration is asking us to transmit misinformation, threatening our integrity and our relationships of mutual trust and respect with research associates and postdocs. Faculty, chairs, and deans should refuse to transmit these messages on behalf of Cozen O’Connor.

The final element of Penn’s anti-union campaign has been to repress union gatherings in plain violation of federal labor law. Under the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, workers have the right to engage in concerted activity—that is, collective action to address shared workplace concerns—and on college campuses, concerted activity routinely takes the form of rallying on campus. Yet on June 12, when RAPUP members gathered for a peaceful demonstration at the Button, they were forced off campus. The Penn administration knows that such measures are illegal: in August 2024, Penn security prevented medical residents in CIR/SEIU from gathering in the courtyard of Pennsylvania Hospital for a union event. This violation of federal labor law resulted in an Unfair Labor Practice charge against Penn.

The AAUP-Penn Executive Committee has written to the Penn administration calling on them to end the anti-union campaign against RAPUP, take down the anti-union website, and pledge to respect the results of the upcoming election; we await their response. Only by taking these measures can the university administration demonstrate respect for the principles of democracy.If these last several years have taught us anything, it’s that the University of Pennsylvania and the United States itself need stronger systems of democratic decision-making. Today, unaccountable donors and politicians who care nothing for education or democracy are attempting to control what can be taught and studied in the United States. As over 1,100 of us demanded this spring, the administration must use its resources to uphold research and teaching, and to uphold the rights of all members of the Penn community; it should not use those resources to attempt to strip those of us who make the university run of our rights to organize, assemble, speak, and protest. The freedoms to teach, learn, study, assemble, and speak are necessary to the integrity of higher education and to democracy itself. If we hope to safeguard the mission of higher education, in which postdocs and research associates play a crucial part, we need to create legitimate forms of democratic decision-making within our universities to resist abuses of power and external interference. In building a union together, our postdoc and RA colleagues are showing us the way.

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This spring, more than 1100 workers at Penn signed a petition demanding that Penn uphold research and counter funding cuts, affirm sanctuary and legal rights of immigrants, maintain commitments to DEIA, and stand up for equal treatment for LGBTQ+ members of our community. Yesterday’s announcement of a resolution agreement between the University and the Department of Education over a Title IX investigation is a painful reminder that Penn’s administration will not adhere to these values. By following a path of political expediency at the expense of trans athletes, Penn makes all trans students, faculty, staff, and community members less safe, exposing them to renewed and emboldened harassment and discriminatory treatment.

Penn’s Latin motto, Leges Sine Moribus Vanae, is usually translated to “Laws Without Morals are Useless.” Rather than putting these principles into practice, Penn has put a price tag on our values, showing the Department of Education that it can use funding freezes to hold us hostage. This outcome is fundamentally about two things: (1) a failure to commit to a campus where everyone can thrive, and (2) the lack of input that key stakeholders have in making decisions that affect how people learn, teach and work at Penn.

The AAUP-Penn Executive Committee calls on all members of the university community to recognize the urgency of this moment. Those who work and study at Penn must together hold this institution accountable to its professed ideals, including the freedom to teach, the freedom to learn, and the freedom to engage in shared decision-making for the future of Penn. The need for all workers at Penn to join together and fight for the principles we share has never been more critical.

For further information, please see the following resources:

  1. Penn labor coalition petition “Penn must uphold research, sanctuary, DEIA, nondiscrimination, and the rights of all members of our community”
  2. AAUP policy statement “On Academic Freedom and Transphobia” 
  3. AAUP “Statement on Professional Ethics”
  4. AAUP policy statement “The Role of the Faculty in the Governance of College Athletics”
  5. AAUP Academe article “The Assault on Transgender Students”

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The University of Pennsylvania’s Temporary Standards and Procedures for Campus Events and Demonstrations constitute an attempt by the central administration to strip faculty, staff, and students of our rights to assemble, speak, and engage in protest—activities that are protected by the principles of academic freedom because they are necessary to education and to democracy itself. These new regulations exemplify what the national AAUP has rightly denounced as a coast-to-coast “wave of administrative policies intended to crack down on peaceful campus protest.”

The unilateral and secretive decision-making that produced these policies is indicative of Penn’s unaccountable system of governance, and it underscores the need for faculty, staff, and students to work together to create legitimate, transparent, and democratic forms of decision-making. Those of us now subject to these rules had no part in creating them; indeed, we learned of them when administrators sent a university-wide email in June simply announcing that they were in force, apparently overriding at least parts of the Guidelines on Open Expression. While the Guidelines on Open Expression describe procedures for changing the Guidelines, involving public hearings and votes to be taken at the level of the Committee on Open Expression and University Council, even these minimal required forms of consultation seem to have been set aside unilaterally. Faculty, staff, and students do not know how the task force now charged with permanently rewriting the Guidelines on Open Expression was composed or when public hearings will be held. Based on the recent record of the central administration, as well as the University Council and the Committee on Open Expression, we have little reason to believe that those hearings would be anything more than window-dressing. All these facts make a mockery of the principle of shared governance. 

The rules themselves are in no way viewpoint-neutral: their timing and content both indicate that they are meant to silence speech critical of Israeli government policies and of the war on Gaza that the administration simply does not want to hear. They prohibit precisely the forms of nonviolent mobilization involved in last year’s antiwar protests—from projecting images on campus buildings to camping out overnight. They grant administrators precisely the powers to surveil protesters that the Guidelines on Open Expression denied them last spring, but which they nevertheless attempted to deploy against participants in the Gaza solidarity encampment.

While they target antiwar protest and criticism of the Israeli government, these rules pose a much broader threat to all of us, no matter our political views. They all but ban assembly and protest on our campus by erecting a thicket of unreasonable restrictions:

  • Temporary Standards Part V bans the use of amplified sound, and thus effectively prevents rallies and demonstrations, at precisely the campus locations standardly used for those activities—green spaces and plazas located near administrative buildings—during the times when most people are on campus. 
  • Part V gives the administration the right to deny the use of space “If noise resulting from an event in an outdoor space may at times interfere or conflict with library, office, and classroom activities” (emphasis added). Given the administration’s unilateral power to interpret and enforce these policies, they could define any and all noise as something that “may at times interfere or conflict” with these activities.
  • The requirement (Temporary Standards III.d, III.e, III.f) that we submit applications to the administration 48 hours to 2 weeks in advance to hold any kind of event makes the right to assemble and demonstrate conditional on prior administrative approval. This grants the administration unacceptable latitude to deny permits based on the substance of the views expressed—latitude that we can reasonably expect this administration to abuse, given that it spent the last year attempting to suppress antiwar protest on the basis of its substantive content, in violation of the Guidelines on Open Expression. 
  • This same rule requiring application prohibits timely responses to crises. If a worker is killed or injured on the job, coworkers have every right to walk off the job and protest on the spot—except, apparently, at the University of Pennsylvania, where the administration would like two weeks to review the idea. Protest is frequently a response to urgent situations and rapidly developing events, and a two-week permit procedure quashes expression at the moment when it is often most necessary and effective. 
  • Requiring us to apply to hold a demonstration further constitutes a form of surveillance (in that it requires those engaged in dissent to identify themselves to administrators) and interrogation (equivalent to requiring us to sit down with administrators and tell them what we or our organizations plan to do in the future). These elements of the policy can be expected to have a chilling effect, discouraging faculty, staff, and students even from attempting to protest. The silence on our campus this fall suggests that these policies are already having a chilling effect.
  • Temporary Standards XIII.b allows the administration to engage in another form of surveillance: demanding to see IDs at demonstrations. Not only does this intimidate those in attendance, but it can also be expected to dissuade faculty, staff, and students from attending a demonstration at all. It is important to note that before this rule was written, the original Guidelines on Open Expression (which superseded all other university policies) only authorized administrators to request IDs in circumstances where the Guidelines were being violated. This new rule is expressly designed to eliminate that constraint, and it therefore allows much broader surveillance of the identities of people who are not violating any university policy but simply attending a demonstration. The problem of surveillance is not resolved by the administration’s claim (Temporary Standards XIII.b.i) that “Checking Penn IDs for safety concerns ordinarily does not involve making a record of the information for purposes of future disciplinary actions.” First, how do members of the University know whether a given situation is considered ordinary, and what recourse do we have to challenge administrative abuse, given that the administration has the exclusive authority to interpret and enforce these rules (Temporary Standards XIII.c, XIII.d)? Second, whether or not a record is made, requiring people to show their IDs makes their identities known to the administration immediately, and that knowledge can be used with or without written records.
  • Temporary Standards X interferes with our ability to communicate the message of a demonstration to those not in attendance, trampling our rights to open expression as well as basic press freedoms. It specifically bans livestreaming “except in limited circumstances where reaching a wider audience is appropriate and approved by the Vice Provost for University Life” and stipulates that news media “may be asked to limit filming to specific areas of campus, especially during demonstrations.” A central purpose of a demonstration is to communicate concerns not just to those in attendance but to wider publics. These provisions undermine the efficacy of demonstrating at all and may dissuade members of the campus community from even attempting to do so.

Clearly these policies threaten the ability of any organization to hold a public demonstration on Penn’s campus. And indeed, the administration may already be using these rules to repress labor organizing at Penn. On August 27, for example, Penn Medicine residents—who voted last year to form a union with CIR/SEIU and began negotiating their first contract—were prevented from holding a union event. According to the DP, residents gathered during their lunch break in the courtyard of Pennsylvania Hospital to mark a milestone in their contract campaign: they had organized a petition signed by a supermajority of members calling on management to meet their demands for fair pay. As is their right under the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, they came together to celebrate that achievement and distribute copies of the petition among the union’s members (along with burritos to go, as residents’ 80-hour work weeks often do not enable them to eat lunch). In response, Penn security did exactly what the Temporary Standards would prescribe: they shut down the gathering. 

The Temporary Standards further open the door to academic freedom violations by requiring that speech on social media be “circumscribed by principles of…civility” (Part IX.a). The national AAUP has repeatedly warned against such vague demands for “civility” in intramural and extramural speech. The AAUP’s website offers extensive analysis of this issue, and we quote Henry Reichman, former chair of AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure:

“[A]dministrative demands for civility may endanger academic freedom when applied to the extramural expression of faculty members… UCLA historian Michael Meranze wrote,

‘The demand for civility effectively outlaws a range of intellectual, literary, and political forms: satire is not civil, caricature is not civil, hyperbole and aesthetic mockery are not civil nor is polemic. Ultimately the call for civility is a demand that you not express anger; and if it was enforced it would suggest that there is nothing to be angry about in the world… We don’t need to pretend that all debates are friendly ones or that there are not real interests in conflict. If universities…are going to model intellectual discourse and life for the country, it is not going to be by imposing some rule of tone; it is going to be by demanding of people that they argue with reasons.’” (Henry Reichman, Understanding Academic Freedom (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021), 97-98.)

Part VII.iv raises similar concerns, as it requires that members of the University “be respectful to University employees involved in ensuring…compliance with these guidelines.” This could prevent faculty, staff, and students from expressing dissent or protest against administrators who enforce these guidelines. The administration has exclusive power to interpret and enforce this policy, and is therefore at liberty to define protest and dissent themselves as disrespectful. Among other things, this would violate the academic freedom of faculty—specifically the right to freedom in intramural expression, which includes the right to criticize the University itself.

When one reads the Temporary Standards closely, it appears that their enforcement would not only trample on open expression, labor rights, and Penn’s written policies on academic freedom, but would interfere with the basic academic functioning of the University. We question whether these standards are enforceable at all or whether, either by design or by necessity, they can only be enforced in a discriminatory manner. For example:

III.b. Events are presumed to be private, that is, limited to members of the Penn community, unless specifically stated otherwise.

This provision reverses an element of the Guidelines on Open Expression, which stated that events were considered to be public (Guidelines II.b). The new rule appears to be inspired by the administration’s frustration that it could not expel community members from the Gaza solidarity encampment last spring. Yet the original rule regarding the public nature of campus events was a functional and necessary one for a university committed to fostering intellectual life: departments and centers routinely organize talks, conferences, and other academic programming featuring invited speakers, and academic events are often attended by colleagues and students from other institutions as well as interested members of the public. Today, it seems entirely possible that most programming at the University is not in compliance with the Temporary Standards, since few announcements for academic events “specifically state” that they are open to the public. Does the administration intend to crack down on academic events that are not in compliance—whether a dissertation defense attended by the candidate’s family, a department workshop featuring an invited scholar from outside Penn, or a film screening attended by colleagues from nearby institutions? Shutting down such events or retroactively punishing faculty and departments that host them would clearly harm the intellectual life of the University and violate the right of faculty to make academic programming decisions. Or does the administration intend to use this rule only to target specific, disfavored individuals and organizations on the basis of the substantive content of their speech?

IV.a. Schools, departments, institutes, individual faculty, students, and staff may not serve as “individual fronts” or “proxies” for non-Penn affiliated organizations who may solicit them in order to gain access to or use of Penn venues to organize or host an event on their behalf.

Faculty members and academic departments, centers, and schools routinely bring the conferences of professional and scholarly organizations to Penn. This enriches the intellectual life of our university, enhances Penn’s reputation, and is an expression of faculty members’ right to freedom in research and teaching. For instance, in 2023, when the American Society for Legal History (ASLH) held its annual meeting in Philadelphia, Penn Carey Law hosted the plenary lecture and a reception, and an ASLH pre-conference symposium also convened at Penn—a tribute to the University’s status in the field of legal history. To prohibit such activity would impoverish the intellectual life of the University, violate faculty members’ academic freedom, and professionally marginalize Penn faculty, preventing us from performing service to our scholarly communities.

If the administration intends to enforce these rules, it threatens the core research and teaching mission of the University, the labor rights of every campus employee, and all aspects of academic freedom and open expression.

If the administration plans instead to be selective and does not intend to enforce these rules consistently, then it must acknowledge that they are discriminatory in nature, aimed at suppressing mobilization against Israeli government policies and warmaking, and possibly other forms of activity including labor organizing, on the basis of the content of the views expressed and participants’ substantive goals.

No matter the administration’s intentions, it is up to all of us to use and defend the rights that remain ours under the principles of academic freedom and open expression that Penn’s written policies have long protected, to reject the illegitimate attempt to overhaul them, and to organize to win real governing power within the University to ensure that rights that exist on paper can be practiced in reality. If the last year has taught us anything, it is that the University of Pennsylvania, and the United States itself, desperately need legitimate, democratic forms of decision-making to defend the freedom to learn, teach, research, assemble, speak, and dissent.

Statement on Temporary StandardsDownload
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Today, the AAUP-Penn Executive Committee issued the following public statement regarding the recent police raid on Penn undergraduate students:

October 26, 2024

We are alarmed by the Penn administration’s escalating use of police action against Penn students. So too are we alarmed by the University’s pattern—established last year and extended this year—of treating all protest by faculty, staff, and students against Israeli government policies and warmaking chiefly as a security concern, rather than an expression of students’ rights to assemble and engage in political activity, and faculty’s right to freedom in extramural speech.

On October 18, members of the University of Pennsylvania Police Department and Philadelphia Police Department raided the home of a group of Penn undergraduates in the middle of the night, reportedly wearing “full tactical gear, including riot helmets, and armed with assault rifles and handguns.” According to The Intercept, the police were executing a warrant investigating a victimless act of vandalism: on September 12, red paint had been poured on the Ben Franklin statue. According to the same reporting, “the police threatened to break down the door with a battering ram and pointed a gun at a neighbor before storming the residence.” They reportedly “trained guns” on students in the house and “refused to provide their names or badge numbers.”

No reasonable person can believe that a student suspected of pouring paint on a statue should be subject to this dangerous and traumatizing treatment. But the university administration has shown itself willing to threaten students with potentially deadly physical violence and terrorize them in their homes. Authorizing an armed police raid on students in these circumstances is abhorrent, and it gives the lie to the university administration’s pretension to be acting to protect students from harm. On October 18, based on what has been reported, the university administration and the police appear to have been the preeminent threats to safety in our community.

This escalation is part of a pattern. Just four days earlier, on October 14, the administration needlessly disrupted the intellectual life of the university by responding to a non-violent demonstration with draconian measures: barricading campus, inhibiting access to academic buildings, and broadcasting fear-inducing security alerts that mischaracterized political speech and peaceful assembly as threats to safety. As it has done repeatedly over the past year, the administration unjustly depicted Penn faculty, staff, and students who were grieving the deaths of Palestinians as outsiders to our community and threats to others. The administration’s actions, not the protest itself, were threatening to members of our community and disruptive to the research and teaching mission of the university. Moreover, they represent clear violations of Penn’s Guidelines on Open Expression, which prohibit the administration from restricting demonstration on the basis of the substance of the views expressed.

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AAUP Members Jessa Lingel and Dustyn Roberts’s guest column in the Daily Pennsylvanian

The University of Pennsylvania prides itself on being a leading institution of higher education, committed to fostering a supportive and inclusive environment for its faculty. Yet this support almost always skews towards tenure-track faculty. One of the most glaring discrepancies for tenure-track versus non-tenure track (NTT) faculty involves the exclusion of NTT faculty from some parental leave benefits. This blatant discrepancy undermines the personal and professional well-being of these essential educators and hampers the University’s reputation as a progressive and equitable workplace. 

It’s time for Penn to provide transparent and consistent parental leave for NTT faculty. Non-tenure track faculty are the backbone of undergraduate education at Penn, representing 62% of our instructors. These faculty members teach courses, mentor students, and conduct research that is crucial to the core mission of our university. Without them, the University couldn’t function. Despite these pivotal contributions, too often NTT faculty are treated as second-class citizens, with fewer benefits compared to their tenured counterparts. In addition to lower pay, less job security, and fewer protections around academic freedom, NTT faculty are subjected to vague, subjectively enforced parental leave policies.

The lack of employer support for caregiving is increasingly driving people out of higher education. Most often, it’s women and gender-nonconforming people who are faced with choosing caregiving over their careers. Tenure-track faculty at Penn receive up to a full year of parental leave from teaching. For NTT faculty, leave policies vary wildly. Some receive teaching relief while others do not. The lack of consistent, transparent policies creates immense financial and emotional strain. It forces them to make impossible choices between their careers and their families. It reduces their ability to plan courses and conduct research. And it sends a clear message that their contributions to the university are less valued than those of tenured faculty.

Currently, workload relief for NTT faculty is determined on a case-by-case basis, resulting in inequity and placing undue burden on individual faculty and department chairs. In contrast, peer institutions have standardized policies guaranteeing at least one semester of workload relief for all new parents (and often two for birth parents). Family-friendly policies improve employee wellbeing and morale, reduce turnover, and help recruit top talent. By committing to the well-being of its NTT faculty, Penn will enhance its reputation as an employer of choice and create a more stable and productive environment for multiple stakeholders, including students, staff, administrators, and faculty.

The School of Arts and Sciences offers a model policy that clearly defines parental leave for both standing and non-standing faculty. The SAS policy includes leave and teaching relief for the birth parent and the spouse or partner of the birth parent. It also specifies leave and teaching relief for adoptive parents and extends the tenure probationary period (standing faculty) or appointment term (non-standing faculty). In contrast to many other policies around the University, it also describes what happens in the case of a summer birth and explicitly lists the type of NTT faculty eligible for these policies. The SAS policy promotes equity and inclusion by offering equal treatment for teaching relief across a diversity of faculty roles. The extension of workload relief to NTT faculty without teaching duties (e.g., research faculty) would make the policy even more comprehensive. 

We urge Penn to expand the SAS policy across the entire University and provide parental leave benefits to all full-time faculty.

So far, we have focused on parental leave policies, but it’s important to note that there are many kinds of caregiving responsibilities that require support from employers. Families can require many types of care, from school-age kids with chronic illnesses to aging parents or an injured spouse. Ensuring fair and consistent policies around parental leave is an important step, but it’s also part of a much larger conversation about supporting workers who provide many different kinds of caregiving.

Penn administration regularly holds up “in principal and in practice” as a framework for institutional priorities and decision-making. It’s time for Penn to put its principles of faculty support and equity into practice for NTT faculty. By committing to equitable and transparent parental leave policies for all faculty members, the University will show it truly values equity, inclusion, and the work-life balance. We encourage you to show your support by signing our petition here.

JESSA LINGEL is an associate professor of Communication, an affiliate faculty member in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies, and the director of the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Program. Her email is lingel@upenn.edu.

DUSTYN ROBERTS is a practice associate professor of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics. Her email is dustyn@seas.upenn.edu.

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We stand with our colleagues in Penn Libraries United who are unionizing to make Penn a better, fairer, and more democratic university.  They are choosing to come together across job categories and join their long-unionized colleagues in AFSCME DC47 Local 590, which has a proud and productive history at Penn. All of us who do the work that makes Penn run deserve a meaningful voice in institutional policies that affect our lives.  All of us deserve working conditions that are equitable.  Unions are essential institutions that provide a democratic voice at work and the capacity to win real change for the better.

If this last year taught us anything, it’s that the University of Pennsylvania and the United States itself need stronger systems of democratic decision-making.  Today, unaccountable donors and politicians who care nothing for education or democracy are attempting to control what can be taught and studied in the United States. Meanwhile, our own university administration is attempting to strip faculty, staff, and students of our rights to assemble, speak, and protest. The freedoms to teach, learn, study, assemble, and speak are necessary to the integrity of higher education and to democracy itself.  If we hope to safeguard the mission of higher education, in which library workers play a crucial part, we need to create legitimate forms of democratic decision-making within our universities to resist external interference and abuses of power.  In building a union together, our colleagues in the libraries are showing us the way. 

As librarians and other library staff are working to build democratic institutions at Penn, the university administration is attempting to undermine them. As they have repeatedly done in past organizing drives, administrators have hired an anti-union law firm and launched an anti-union campaign designed to interfere with workers’ legal right to organize. They have disseminated misleading and intimidating anti-union materials framed as neutral “information,” a standard tactic that employers use to sow fear, doubt, and confusion and sway the outcome of elections. We call on Penn’s central administration and on library administrators to cease this coercive attempt to interfere with workers’ right to organize, and we call on them to honor the legacy of negotiation with a well-established union at Penn. Only by ending the anti-union campaign can the university administration demonstrate respect for the principle of workplace democracy—a principle that we so desperately need at Penn and across higher education today.