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The Association of American Universities is a hallowed organization that has defined research university excellence in this country for more than a century. Unfortunately, it is now at risk of becoming an irrelevant bystander to the most serious assault on academic freedom in the modern history of American higher education.
Drawing on the Supreme Court’s landmark holding in Sweezy v. New Hampshire (1957), the AAU affirms in its 2013 statement on academic principles that institutional autonomy is “the right of the university to determine for itself, on academic grounds, who may teach, what may be taught, how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study.” The statement further declares that academic freedom is “the freedom of university faculty to produce and disseminate knowledge through research, teaching, and service, without undue constraint.” And it recognizes shared governance as the mechanism through which faculty hold “the primary responsibility for matters related to education and research, such as setting the curriculum.” The AAU acknowledges these are principles “that have been central to the research university enterprise” and that “have strongly contributed to the quality of American universities.”
I argue that if a member institution is in flagrant violation of these principles, the AAU should consider imposing sanctions. Doing so would send a strong message to research universities that aspire to AAU membership that they are evaluated not only for research prowess, but also a commitment to academic freedom.
The threats now bearing down on AAU member institutions and all of higher education are not marginal adjustments to regulatory compliance or garden-variety disputes over institutional policy. They are systematic, coordinated and escalating attacks on the very principles that the AAU has declared to be foundational to the research university enterprise.
Consider what is happening at AAU member institutions in Florida and Texas—states where political interference in academic affairs has moved well beyond rhetoric into operational reality. In Florida, the Board of Governors voted in March to eliminate Introduction to Sociology from the general education curriculum at all 12 public universities, including two AAU members, the Universities of Florida and South Florida. Ray Rodrigues, the chancellor of the State University of Florida System, announced, “Sociology as a discipline is now social and political advocacy dressed in the regalia of the academy” and declared it “ideologically captured.”
This was no considered academic judgment rendered through faculty deliberation and peer review. It was members of a predominantly gubernatorially appointed board unilaterally striking an entire discipline from the general education curriculum—precisely the kind of decision that the AAU’s own principles reserve for faculty through shared governance.
At Texas A&M University, an AAU member since 2001, the Board of Regents adopted a policy in late 2025 requiring administrative preapproval for courses that “advocate race or gender ideology, sexual orientation, or gender identity.” The implementation was swift and chilling: At least 200 courses in the College of Arts and Sciences were flagged for review or canceled. A philosophy professor was directed to remove readings from Plato because they touched on gender; a graduate ethics course was canceled after the semester had already begun because the professor—who happened to be president of the campus American Association of University Professors chapter—had not satisfied administrators that his course complied with the new restrictions. In January, the university announced it would eliminate its women’s and gender studies degree programs entirely.
It is essential to recognize that the logic now being applied to sociology and gender studies has no natural stopping point. The rationale used by Florida’s chancellor—that a discipline has been “ideologically captured” and has become “social and political advocacy dressed in the regalia of the academy”—can be directed at virtually any field in the social sciences and humanities. Climate science, public health, political science, history, literature—all are vulnerable to the identical charge the moment their findings or methods prove inconvenient to those in power. Once the principle is conceded that political actors may determine which disciplines are legitimate and which are not, there is no intellectual firewall protecting any field of inquiry.
Equally alarming is the degree to which institutional compliance has exceeded what the law actually requires in many instances. As multiple observers have noted, the policies adopted by the Texas A&M Board of Regents go well beyond the mandates of Texas Senate Bill 37. No state or federal law explicitly bars professors from teaching about race, gender or sexual orientation. Yet Texas A&M has implemented semester-by-semester content reviews, required administrative preapproval for courses touching on these topics, directed a professor to remove Plato from a syllabus and canceled a graduate ethics course after the semester had already begun. These are not acts of legal compliance. They are acts of anticipatory submission—a race to capitulate before being asked to do so. When institutions outrun the demands of even the most aggressive political actors, it signals something deeper than coercion: It signals the internalization of censorship as an institutional norm.
It is critical that AAU act in accordance with its principles. Taking action to enforce its principles would have far-reaching impact beyond its membership. The 2026 Academic Freedom Index reports that institutional autonomy in the United States has declined by 50 percent in the past decade, with the steepest deterioration occurring under current federal policies. A PEN America report on censorship in higher education concluded simply, “For higher education in America, 2025 was a year of catastrophe.” The report documents that more than half of all college students in this country now study in a state with at least one law or policy restricting what can be taught or how campuses can operate. Twenty-three states now have such laws or policies on the books—up from 15 just one year earlier.
In a well-functioning system of higher education governance, the accreditors would serve as a check against precisely the kind of political interference now unfolding in Florida, Texas and elsewhere. Regional accreditors have historically required that faculty hold primary responsibility for the content, quality and effectiveness of the curriculum—a standard that the policies adopted by the Texas A&M Board of Regents and the Florida Board of Governors plainly violate. But the accreditors have been systematically neutralized by changes to federal rules, state legislation or executive orders. If an accreditor sanctions an institution, the institution can go accreditor shopping.
This is precisely why the AAU’s role becomes not just important, but indispensable. If accreditation can no longer serve as a meaningful guarantor of institutional integrity on matters of academic freedom, then some other institution must. The AAU is uniquely positioned to fill that void, not because it is a regulatory body, but because its membership carries a form of currency that no accreditor can match: prestige. University presidents campaign for AAU membership. Boards of trustees cite it as evidence of institutional quality. State legislators invoke it when arguing for funding. Donors and prospective faculty weigh it in their decisions. If that prestige is conditioned on the maintenance of academic freedom, it becomes a lever—perhaps the only remaining lever—capable of altering the political calculus that university leaders now face.
When regional accreditors were strong, they could send a show cause letter on why an institution’s accreditation could be suspended if a serious violation of a standard was alleged. That threat alone was sufficient for institutional leaders and trustees to take corrective action. Could the AAU exert similar influence on its members? Would the threat of suspension or expulsion make trustees and legislators moderate their interference into institutional curricular autonomy? Would overcompliance or anticipatory compliance abate? I hope so.
