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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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On May 9, 2025, the AAUP-Penn Executive Committee gave the following testimony at a Philadelphia City Council Hearing on Attacks against DEI at Penn.

We are proud to testify today to amplify a message sent by Penn employees across the university this spring: the Penn administration must end its backtracking on racial and social justice. It must uphold basic principles of equity, and it must reaffirm that diversity and open inquiry are essential to research, teaching, and the advancement of knowledge. In March, over 1,100 Penn employees signed their names to these demands in a petition to the administration, and hundreds of us demonstrated on campus.  We are proud that the Penn chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP-Penn) was one of six campus labor organizations that cosponsored this petition, and we are proud to stand together in this work with unions representing Penn graduate workers, postdocs, medical residents, library workers, and museum workers.  These are consensus issues among those of us who work at Penn. 

It is important to understand that the Trump administration’s attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion policies are in fact attacks on the gains of the civil rights movement and the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s.  It is also important to understand that those movements won institutional changes that improved the quality of US universities. During the McCarthy era of the 1950s, US universities were relatively closed, segregated institutions with little tolerance for critical thought and open inquiry.  Faculty were purged for participating in the civil rights and labor movements, and those purges impoverished the intellectual life of our entire society: they drove out scholars in the sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities, and they chilled the speech of faculty, staff, and students who remained.  Just as important, those purges compounded the effects of decades of racial, gender, and ethnic discrimination that had already put higher education out of reach of most people in the United States.

In many ways, we owe the revitalization of our universities to the Black freedom movement and the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s, which broke through the repressive atmosphere of the early Cold War and opened US higher education to people, ideas, and entire fields of knowledge that had been shut out.  We have those movements to thank for the very existence of African-American studies, ethnic studies, the study of gender and sexuality, and critical research on racism, colonialism and imperialism.  It is no accident that those are precisely the areas of study under attack today at Penn and across the country. And it is no accident that attacks on those fields are going hand-in-hand with assaults on diversity, on racial and social justice, and on our colleagues and students who are people of color, noncitizens, trans and LGBTQ+ who have every right to be at Penn and without whose knowledge and insights our university and our society would be impoverished. For many of us the DEI initiatives that existed were only a step in the right direction as they often did not address the structural and systemic inequities and power dynamics built into the institutions of higher education, learning processes and means of knowledge production that have led to the reproduction of the status quo. If they had been successful, we would not have been in this place so soon.  Now even those overtures and attempts at change are under attack, leading to further regression.  

So we stand against executive orders that would return us to the days of segregation. We stand against politicians, donors, and lobbying organizations that would like to control what can be taught and studied in the United States. And we believe that it is time for the Penn administration to stand with us.

To this point, Penn’s administration has failed to do so. In the wake of Donald Trump’s executive orders attacking DEI, we are proud that the national AAUP sued the Trump administration, arguing that the orders were unlawful and unconstitutional.  By contrast, Penn’s central administration began directing faculty and staff to scrub websites and censor academic programming.  Some colleagues were told by supervisors that Penn’s General Counsel had a list of prohibited words. Other colleagues were told that really, they could keep teaching and researching whatever they wanted, but just change all the words.  As these colleagues noted, this is not possible.  Censorship threatens the very existence of many fields of study: it is not possible to conduct research or teaching on racism, gender, or sexuality when those terms, concepts, and issues are deemed unspeakable.  It is not possible to hold a workshop for faculty on how to make classes accessible to students from diverse backgrounds when you can’t circulate an announcement using any of the words that would tell people what the workshop is about.  Censorship fatally undermines the freedom of faculty to teach, as well as the freedom of students to learn.  It destroys the conditions of free and open inquiry that are necessary for universities to fulfill their mission—to produce and disseminate new knowledge that can serve the public good in a democratic society.

For these reasons, 1,100 Penn employees have called on Penn’s administration to end its backtracking on diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.  The Penn administration must cease instructing faculty, staff, and students to censor programs, funding proposals, and websites. It must restore policies, websites, and programming that were in place to make the University open and accessible to all before the publication of executive orders.  It must retain staff who implement those policies and programs.  It must vigorously defend researchers and instructors who face targeted harassment for their scholarship and teaching on racism, disability, gender, and sexuality.  And all future decisions on these issues must be made by the affected members of the University, not handed down unilaterally by the central administration.

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This Thursday, as part of a national day of action for higher education, join colleagues and students at two events sponsored by AAUP-Penn: a know-your-rights training and a screening of the documentary film The Encampments.

1. AAUP-Penn Know-Your-Rights Training: Thursday, April 17, at 4 p.m. in Fisher-Bennett Hall 135 and by Zoom. Organized by AAUP-Penn members, this training is open to all Penn faculty, staff, and students, whether you are concerned for your own status and safety, or whether you want to learn how to support and uphold the rights of international and noncitizen colleagues and students who may be targeted. An immigration attorney will be present to answer your questions.

Know Your Rights Training poster: Tuesday, April 17, 4pm, Fisher-Bennett 135 (or via zoom)

2. Film Screening of The Encampments: Thursday, April 17, 6-8 p.m. in Annenberg 110.

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AAUP-Penn is proud to co-sponsor this documentary film screening as an expression of our chapter’s commitment to academic freedom. 

Academic freedom includes the right of faculty members to make programming decisions within their areas of expertise. The decisions of the Center for Experimental Ethnography (CEE), the Media, Inequality, and Change (MIC) Center, and the Program in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies (GSWS) to cosponsor this film screening are straightforward exercises of academic freedom.

Academic freedom also includes the right of faculty members to freedom in extramural speech (speech made as a member of the public on topics of general concern) and freedom in intramural speech (speech about the university itself, including criticism of the university). The decision of Penn Faculty & Staff for Justice in Palestine (Penn FSJP) to cosponsor this film screening is a straightforward exercise of those freedoms.

Academic freedom further entails the freedom of students to learn—to encounter and critically examine multiple interpretations of the world, and to engage in political speech and association, which are essential aspects of education and learning. The decision of Penn Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) to cosponsor this film screening is a straightforward exercise of students’ right to freedom in learning.

Since the fall of 2023, the Penn administration has repeatedly violated its own policies on academic freedom and open expression by denying faculty and students the opportunity to hold film screenings and teach-ins exploring critical perspectives on Israeli government policies and the war in Gaza. In light of the Penn administration’s record of suppressing open discussion of the issues at the heart of this documentary film, we feel it is important and appropriate for all faculty who believe in academic freedom to say clearly that this film screening is a legitimate event that belongs on our campus. For a university to fulfill its mission, there must be institutional space for open discussion of difficult and controversial topics, and faculty and students must vigorously exercise the rights that are ours under the principles of academic freedom. We encourage faculty members to attend this screening of The Encampments to demonstrate their support for academic freedom and to engage in dialogue on issues important to the future of our university, higher education as a whole, our democracy, and our world.

—AAUP-Penn Executive Committee

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Today, executive orders and federal funding cuts are threatening life-saving research at Penn; the principles of racial justice, equity, accessibility, and nondiscrimination that are necessary to higher education for the public good; and the rights of faculty, staff, and students, including those who are international or noncitizens, people of color, and trans and LGBTQ+.

On Thursday, March 20 at noon at 34th and Walnut, join Penn employees, students, community members, and elected officials to send a message: Penn must not obey in advance! The Penn administration must uphold research, sanctuary, DEIA, nondiscrimination, and the rights of all members of our community.

This demonstration is co-sponsored by 6+ Penn labor organizations representing faculty, medical residents, graduate workers, postdocs, museum workers, and library workers.  For more on our coalition and goals, read our recent op-ed. If you work at Penn, sign the coalition petition in support of these principles.