We have a new flier thanks to the creative and collaborative efforts of Professor Bryan Klausmeyer!
The Virginia Tech Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) invites you to download this flier, print it off, and hang it up on your office door. Help us grow our chapter through grassroots organizing and good old-fashioned one-on-one conversations.
We hope you have a salubrious break and we hope to hear from you soon.
Sincerely,
Kristopher Hite
VT AAUP Chapter President
On April 8th, 2025 the VT Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) will host a teach-in focused on the scale and impact of federal research grant funding. This is an in-person event happening in room 340 of Hitt Hall on campus at Virginia Tech from 5-6 PM. We will hear different perspective from the chapter on the impacts of these cuts to research and outreach at Virginia Tech and the implications for the broader community. This event is open to the public.
This event is part of a national AAUP Day of action titled – Kill the Cuts
Email questions to kristopherhite@gmail.com
Please find the text of the letter below.
Greetings President Sands and Provost Clarke,
I am writing to you today on behalf of the Virginia Tech Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (VT AAUP). On March 4th, 2025 we held a chapter meeting and our membership had several questions about the position of the administration regarding executive orders concerning Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) issued in late January 2025. Members expressed concern that there has been much preemptive compliance with these orders, especially considering that a federal judge in Baltimore largely blocked them as they apply to institutions of higher education on February 21st, 2025.
President Sands, during the State of the University address, you mentioned holding a series of town halls to discuss these EOs and the effect on programs including InclusiveVT and our Principles of Community. Can you give us an update on when and where these town halls will be held?
Although we are sensitive to employees of the university who might feel fear of retaliation and want to change their job titles if they included specific words targeted in the EOs, we feel a pronounced downstream chilling effect in our speech; in our faculty meetings, while rethinking language to be used in syllabi, and in general on campus as a consequence of instances of preemptive compliance. Chapter members voiced concerns that undergraduate and graduate students alike are feeling that we as faculty members have not done enough to speak up about unconstitutional actions coming from the executive branch in recent weeks. Provost Clarke, thank you for your empathetic message published on March 4th, 2025. You are clearly aware of the feelings of fear, anxiety, and oppression currently shared by students and faculty alike in the current climate. Please let us know if we can provide additional testimony, or other forms of support during the current uncertainty.
In my own department I had served for years on a committee focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion, and in the wake of these orders the committee’s name was changed to the “strategic engagement and opportunity” committee. When I asked the committee chair why this change was made, I got the response that they were “following orders.” The question I have for you both is, whose orders? It is unclear to many VT AAUP chapter members where these changes in language and meaning originate, and we continue to receive unclear and sometimes contradictory explanations from our immediate supervisors. We understand that there is a certain amount of legal uncertainty involved, but venture to ask, might we gain some clarity from the University leadership on the use of the words Diversity Equity and Inclusion at this moment? Does the University condone/support such committees changing their names and/or, more consequentially, shifting the focus of the work being done therein? Thank you for taking the time to read these questions.
Sincerely,
Kristopher C. Hite
President
Virginia Tech Chapter of the American Association of University Professors
Update: We promptly received an encouraging response from President Sands promising updates and relevant information to all campus communities after the March 25-26 Board of Visitors (BoV) meeting.
The Virginia Tech Chapter of the AAUP supports peaceful protest and the robust expression of 1st Amendment rights and of contractual rights including academic freedom of students, faculty, and staff. In addition, it rejects abusive or threatening speech or writing that expresses prejudice on the basis of culture, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or similar grounds. We support the Supreme Court decision as expressed in Healy v. James which reads, “the vigilant protection of constitutional freedoms is nowhere more vital than in the community of American schools.” And we urge Virginia Tech to do all that it can to defend and foster respectful debate, support dissenting voices, and to model ways for Virginia Tech students to understand diverse and sometimes competing perspectives and views in a peaceful yet pluralistic society.
Statement In Defense of the Right to Free Speech and Peaceful Protest
on Virginia Campuses and Across the Nation
“If you aren’t upholding free speech and freedom of assembly in times like this, then these
foundational constitutional freedoms are meaningless.” – Irene Mulvey, President, AAU
As protests against the war in Gaza continue to proliferate in Virginia and across the nation, the Virginia Conference of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) defends the right to free speech and peaceful protest on university campuses. We are horrified by and condemn in the strongest possible terms the heavy-handed, severe, unnecessary militarized response by institutional leaders to these activities. We are horrified by the administrative overreaction, including the use of police force and chemical weapons such as pepper spray on campuses, which only serves to increase violence and endanger the lives of students, faculty, and the public at large.
We condemn antisemitism, islamophobia, and racism on our campuses. While we uphold and defend the free speech rights of all members of our communities, we affirm that harassment, hate, and fear-mongering have no place on campus or anywhere. We echo the AAUP statement that pro-Palestinian speech or speech critical of Israeli actions is not inherently antisemitic just as pro-Israel speech or speech critical of Palestinian actions is not inherently Islamophobic. We would also point out that free speech protections do not cover speech specifically meant to harass or intimidate individuals. When institutional leaders take action against students and faculty, we call upon them to uphold policies, disciplinary procedures, and due process procedures established through shared governance processes. Institutions should not rush to punish peaceful protestors—students and faculty alike—without ensuring due process. Students, faculty and staff on campuses should be aware of, informed of, and have easy access to, all specific university policies regarding speech, assembly, codes of ethics, civil disobedience, suspension, termination and other disciplinary actions.
Across the Commonwealth, we are increasingly alarmed by the exertion of political pressure on university leaders by governing officials and other politicians, by powerful donors, and by other interest groups. Recently, Governor Youngkin weighed in on current protests, equating peaceful protests, erecting tents, and sleeping on campus with violence, harassment, and intimidation, a statement that contributes to ideological and political interference on college campuses. We urge Governor Youngkin and institutional leaders to pull back on this rhetoric and make every effort to de-escalate campus tensions, meet with students, and listen to their concerns and demands.
We urge institutional leaders across the Commonwealth to be courageous and resist capitulation to political pressure. It is dismaying as we look across the nation how many university leaders have already given up on and utterly abandoned long-standing principles of academic freedom and shared governance that are meant to protect institutions of higher education from political interference. As stated by the AAUP, “Policies guaranteeing academic freedom and free speech mean nothing if they are not upheld in times of stress.” We stand alongside the AAUP in calling on institutional leaders to reinstate student organizations shut down in recent months for political activity, to drop charges against peaceful protesters, to observe due process in disciplinary actions, to keep armed law enforcement off campuses, and to uphold the fundamental freedoms of free speech, protest, and academic freedom.
Faculty and/or students facing discipline at Virginia colleges and universities as a result of peaceful protest are encouraged to contact your local Virginia AAUP campus chapter or VA-AAUP leadership for support.
In Defense of the Right to Free Speech and Peaceful Protest on University Campuses
AAUP and its chapters defend the right to free speech and peaceful protest on university campuses, condemn the militarized response by institutional leaders to these activities, and vehemently oppose the politically motivated assault on higher education.
Our colleges and universities are places of free and open expression, inquiry, and debate. Even in sharp disagreement, our goal is communication in service of learning and understanding. The critical evaluation of different points of view and the questioning of even the most deeply held beliefs are essential to learning. So too is our students’ right to protest and to express their political convictions.
In a democratic society based on the fundamental value of free speech, it is unacceptable to respond to demonstrations with violent repression. When the Speaker of the House of Representatives equates protesters at Columbia University with terrorists, he irresponsibly incites violence. When politicians demand the resignation of university presidents, they threaten the autonomy of private universities. These actions continue an alarming and decades-long trend of undermining the shared governance, academic freedom and independence that have made American higher education globally preeminent. These recent interferences and threats are part of an ongoing partisan, political attack intended to dismantle higher education in service to the public interest, and make our institutions beholden only to corporate, political and private interests. They are an existential threat to democracy.
We condemn, in the strongest possible terms, the heavy-handed, militaristic response to student activism that we are seeing across the country. At this critical moment, too many cowardly university leaders are responding to largely peaceful, outdoor protests by inviting law enforcement in riot gear to campus and condoning violent arrests. These administrators are failing in their duty to their institutions, their faculty, their students, and their central obligation to our democratic society. When university administrators limit when, where, and how free speech may be exercised, and require advanced applications for permission of such expression, they effectively gut the right itself. To insist that harsh discipline and violent repression are necessary to combat hate on a college campus is a pretext to suppress protest and silence speech.
Harassment and hate have no place on college campuses or anywhere. Universities have carefully developed policies and disciplinary procedures based on due process to address these long-standing problems and these must be used now and allowed to run their course. Policies enacted unilaterally after October 7 violate principles of shared governance, and institutions should enforce only mutually-approved policies which, on a college campus, should be focused on restorative justice and learning in service of understanding.
We are alarmed at the shameless exertion of pressure on university leaders by the nation’s politicians, by the universities’ most powerful donors, and by other interest groups. We are even more alarmed at how quickly our institutional leaders have capitulated to that pressure. In just a few months, too many university leaders have abandoned long-standing principles of academic freedom and shared governance that are meant to protect colleges from such outside influence. Policies guaranteeing academic freedom and free speech mean nothing if they are not upheld in times of stress. We call on institutional leaders to reinstate student organizations shut down in recent months for political activity, to drop charges against peaceful protesters, to observe due process in disciplinary actions, to keep armed law enforcement off campuses, and to uphold fundamental freedoms for students and faculty.
AAUP stands with our chapters and members nationwide who are defending free speech, the right of assembly, and associational rights for students. The way forward is through education and dialogue, not through zip-ties and fear-mongering. We invite all AAUP members, AAUP chapters, higher-education unions and any organizational ally to endorse these positions by signing this statement.
Signed:
Faculty, student, or labor organizations interested in signing on to this statement, please contact Austin Rhea at arhea@aaup.org.
Professors of all stripes (or checks, or plaids, or rainbows, or whatever you wish) – come join us for a Spring Gathering of Virginia Tech’s Chapter of AAUP at the Rising Silo Brewery at 2351 Glade Road on Thursday, April 13 from 4:30-6:30 pm. If you can answer three non-trivial questions about academic freedom, the chapter will buy you a glass of something wonderful!* You do NOT need to be a member of VT-AAUP. **
*Wonderfulness to be determined. 🙂
** But it would be great if you would become one!
VT professors of all stripes – full, associate, assistant, instructors, collegiate, research, etc. Please join us tomorrow, Wednesday, November 9 at Eastern Divide Brewery from 4:30 – 6:15 pm. Meet the VT AAUP officers and just have fun socializing with your colleagues. Prizes will be awarded to winners of a completely lame, but fun, trivia game. 🙂
A recent article in the NYT showed that an eminent professor of organic chemistry was let go because students signed a petition that his class was too hard and they were not getting the grades they needed to get into medical school. Think I am oversimplifying? Maybe, but read the article for yourself. If you cannot access it with the link, email me at jmerola@vt.edu for a copy of the article.
Virginia Tech Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) 
You must be logged in to post a comment.