They Are Watching Us (Excerpt from March 2026 Newsletter)

They are watching us. I have said some variation of this in every month’s installment of this newsletter and almost every urgent action in between, and it is true. The think tanks and malicious actors in powerful places are watching us.

• They watched all 3000 of us sign the petition opposing the UNC Syllabus Policy and its Doxxing Database.

• They watched us come together and increase our NC Conference membership by 250% year-over-year, which makes us the fastest growing conference in the country.

• They watched all 1000 of us sign the petition opposing the UNC Academic Freedom Policy and the many NC and National Members who pushed their way into the Board of Governors meeting to bear witness to the vote that would pass the new policy.

After they watched how we refused to back down and refused to give up on the principals that make our universities worth the time and effort we put into them as employees, students, and community members, they have started backing down. In the past week, AAUP has had two significant victories in our state:

1) UNC Recording Policy Reversal. After watching our AAUP responses, UNC Chapel Hill reversed course on pursuing its just-announced, proposed Recording Policy that would allow the university to record any faculty teaching at any time. They are scrapping the whole thing. This is a major win for academic freedom within the UNC system, because Chapel Hill is a bellwether for regional campuses like ours.

2)Academic Freedom Policy Concessions. While a version of the Academic Freedom Policy was passed that will still curtail speech in our classrooms, the petitions we signed and the faculty presence we had got several key changes made to the policy. These changes will continue to allow us as faculty to use our expertise as teachers and scholars to make pedagogical decisions about our content. This may seem like small potatoes and it would have been better if this policy had not passed, but these are concessions that hinted that the needle was moving in our direction and allow us to do our jobs and learn more freely than the first draft. Make no mistake, we aren't finished with this policy, but we are still celebrating this victory.

If you signed a petition, you made this happen. If you joined AAUP, you made this happen. If you wrote letters, talked to your friends and colleagues, and/or marched to Raleigh this past Thursday, you made this happen.

If you haven’t done any of those things yet, just imagine the impact we can have with your involvement. I’ll go ahead and put my requisite plug for you to join AAUP and WCU AAUP here.

If you join, let us know. We only get an updated roster once a month and would love to connect with and integrate you into the chapter much faster than National AAUP’s timeline. (3/1/2026)

WCU-AAUP Opposes UNC System Proposal to Publish Syllabi

Publicly Posting Syllabi Is Part of the Right-Wing Higher Ed Agenda - Op Ed in Asheville Citizen Times

UNC System President Peter Hans announced last week a proposed policy that would require all faculty at North Carolina’s 16 public universities to post their syllabi in an online database. Despite Hans’s claims that the policy will promote transparency, it actually is an assault on academic freedom that furthers the right-wing takeover of higher education and puts faculty and students at risk.

College classrooms are meant to be spaces where students and faculty explore ideas in the pursuit of truth. The open exchange of ideas requires faculty and students to feel comfortable taking intellectual risks with one another to better understand the world and change it. For these reasons, academic freedom has been a long-standing pillar of higher education in the United States. The American Association of University Professors defines academic freedom as “the freedom of a teacher or researcher in higher education to investigate and discuss the issues in their academic field, and to teach and publish findings without interference from administrators, boards of trustees, political figures, donors, or other entities.” With regard to teaching, academic freedom “includes the right of faculty members to select the materials, determine the approach to the subject, make the assignments, and assess student academic performance in teaching activities for which they are individually responsible” without outside interference.

Academic freedom is a bedrock principle of higher education in the United States, and it is one of the things that has made our system the envy of the world. Creating new knowledge means pushing the boundaries of what is known, and these discoveries can sometimes be deemed controversial. One need only look to Copernicus and his heliocentric model of the universe to understand that academics can face persecution for insights society now takes for granted. That is why academic freedom is so essential to higher education—it protects faculty and students from political interference in their search for truth.

Publicly posting syllabi is an effort to prevent the teaching of topics that right-wing actors deem “unacceptable.” Faculty risk being doxed and harassed for simply teaching the generally accepted principles of their disciplines, as has been happening in Texas. Already this year, some classes at UNC Charlotte had to be cancelled for safety reasons because of outside agitators attempting to film those classes. Such instances will increase if this new policy goes into effect, and President Hans acknowledged as much in his statement endorsing the policy. In his eyes, however, the safety of students and faculty is worth sacrificing at the altar of “transparency.”

The reality is that the policy is meant to prevent students from learning about topics the current administration deems unacceptable. This will deprive students of a robust education and put targets on the backs of faculty who choose to teach such content, despite the risks. It positions UNC schools as the new front in a political campaign that will increase the risks of physical violence and exacerbate division while stifling creativity.

For these reasons and others, more than 2,500 faculty, students, and community members have signed a petition calling on the UNC System to abandon this reckless plan. I encourage readers to join the petition and contact the UNC System to express their opposition to this policy.

By Vincent Russell, PhD; President of the Western Carolina University chapter of the American Association of University Professors (WCU-AAUP) (12/19/2025)

Statement in Opposition to the UNC System Public Syllabi Proposal

The WCU-AAUP strongly opposes the latest proposal from the UNC System to force faculty to publish their syllabi. This policy would violate academic freedom and put faculty, students, and community members at risk. Our chapter recognizes syllabi to be the intellectual property of faculty and not public records. This proposed policy is a politically motivated attack on academic freedom that could further exacerbate faculty and students being harassed for simply teaching and learning material essential to their disciplines.

Faculty are hired as experts and leaders in their fields. This type of “transparency” will lead to bad-faith attacks on WCU courses, chilling free inquiry on our campus. Reading lists and course objectives could be weaponized against faculty and departments through complaints about “political” or controversial concepts. WCU already spends exorbitant resources responding to partisan criticism, which disrupts teaching, learning, and research. This policy will harm learning conditions in classrooms, as it damages the trust that’s essential among and between faculty and students to take intellectual risks in pursuit of truth without fear of reprisal.

This decision puts faculty, students, and the entire university at risk of technology-facilitated threats and physical harm. If “disfavored” information appears on syllabi, inexpert and politically-motivated actors may seek to harm faculty or disrupt classes. WCU has already seen campaigns by far-right actors that have resulted in the harassment of transgender students and the closing of the Intercultural Affairs Office. We expect such campaigns and targeted actions against faculty and staff will increase if syllabi are forced to be published.

The WCU-AAUP stands in defense of academic freedom. Academic freedom is the freedom of a teacher or researcher in higher education to investigate and discuss the issues in their academic field, and to teach and publish findings without interference from administrators, boards, political figures, donors, or other entities who are not experts in the disciplines. Publishing syllabi violates this core value and harms the quality of the teaching and research that happens at WCU. The proposed policy may lead to a chill on research and expression from both faculty and students. It will make it harder to recruit and retain the best faculty, which diminishes the university experience for students and ultimately harms Western North Carolina’s economy.

We urge our members and supporters to stand in solidarity with each other in defense of academic freedom and oppose the proposed UNC System policy that would require faculty to publish their syllabi. Anyone who is passionate about higher education can sign this petition to voice their opposition to the proposed policy. (12/10/2025)