January 11th, 2026: The FAS-SEAS Senate and the Yale chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP Yale) jointly present the following letter.
Revisions to the Faculty Handbook – A Joint Initiative of the Yale AAUP Chapter and of the FAS-SEAS Senate
The Yale Chapter of AAUP established a working group on academic freedom and university governance. The group brought together ladder and non-ladder faculty from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), and the professional schools, and included AAUP members, FAS-SEAS senators and former senators, and legal scholars[1]. The group met regularly over the Spring and Summer to review the Yale Faculty Handbook and to develop proposed revisions to strengthen its protections for academic freedom and improve its provisions for shared governance. It undertook this work at a moment of heightened concern for academic freedom in the United States. It began by reviewing Yale’s policies and determined that, even though the Faculty Handbook does mention academic freedom in the context of the Woodward Report, Yale took the position in a recent brief to the Second Circuit court that these references to academic freedom are not “sufficiently specific” to amount to “a set of contractual promises.” Even more troubling, the court appeared to agree. Clearly, there is a need to provide more certain protection of academic freedom, given this history.
These local developments have unfolded against a national backdrop of escalating attacks on academic freedom across higher education, demonstrating how fragile academic freedom protections can be when they are treated as aspirational rather than binding, and why we must take steps to secure them. Clear and codified academic freedom protections are, we believe, important both for faculty and for the institution. Academic freedom furthers our mission, and clearer codification will make it easier for the Administration to resist inappropriate outside pressure in a very difficult moment in higher education.
The proposed revisions to the Introduction and Section II of the Faculty Handbook (included in full below) are designed to meet this need with minimal changes in the text. We have consulted legal experts and academic freedom protection at other universities, and propose the following changes:
- An explicit commitment that all future revisions to the Handbook will be developed in consultation with a committee of the faculty chosen by the FAS-SEAS Senate and the professional schools. This ensures faculty participation in governance at the highest level.
- A clear and specific definition of academic freedom, drawn from the AAUP’s canonical definition, stating: “Academic freedom consists of freedom of research and publication, freedom of teaching in the classroom, freedom to participate in and comment upon matters of university governance, and freedom to speak in public as citizens and public intellectuals.”
- An acknowledgment that both faculty and the University bear responsibility for creating and maintaining the conditions under which academic freedom can be realized.
- A statement, which is standard in many other faculty handbooks, to clarify that the individual contracts of faculty are with the University, not with a specific department or program.
- An explicit commitment from the University that it will not terminate any school, department, or program without faculty consultation.
The FAS-SEAS Senate approved the proposed amendments to the Faculty Handbook on October 7th and incorporated them in a FAS-SEAS Report.As a result, the request to implement the proposed changes is a joint initiative of the Yale Chapter of AAUP and the FAS-SEAS Senate.
These and future revisions ought to be part of a collaborative process between the faculty and the administration that will strengthen our community and ensure that Yale can continue to lead with integrity and innovation in the rapidly changing landscape of higher education.
[1]The committee includes: Tarren Andrews (Faculty of Arts and Sciences – Ethnicity, Race, and Migration, & Medieval Studies), Alessandro Gomez (School of Engineering and Applied Science – Mechanical Engineering), Amy Kapczynski (Yale Law School), Chris McGowan (Faculty of Arts and Sciences – English), Laura Nasrallah (Yale Divinity School & Faculty of Arts and Sciences – Religious Studies), Robert Post (Law School), Mark Solomon (Faculty of Arts and Sciences – Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry), Dara Strolovitch (Faculty of Arts and Sciences – Political Science, American Studies, & Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies), Mimi Yiengpruksawan (Faculty of Arts and Sciences – History of Art).
April 2025: Faculty Letter to Yale University Administration
The FAS-SEAS Senate and the Yale chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP Yale) jointly present the following letter. We stand together urging Yale’s leaders to stand up for academic freedom and to protect all research, academic programs, and people at Yale.
Dear President McInnis, Provost Strobel, and Members of the Yale Board of Trustees:
We stand together at a crossroads. American universities are facing extraordinary attacks that threaten the bedrock principles of a democratic society, including rights of free expression, association, and academic freedom. We write as one faculty, to ask you to stand with us now.
We urge you to:
- Defend the values and ideals of higher education, and Yale’s specific mission of “improving the world through outstanding research and scholarship, education, preservation, and practice.”
- Resist and legally challenge any unlawful demands that threaten academic freedom and university self-governance.
- Commit that no department, program, or structure of shared governance will be reorganized or eliminated in response to political threats.
- Protect science and other research at Yale from funding cutoffs, by providing legal and financial support to affected scholars and research units, mobilizing extraordinary resources as necessary.
- Defend the rights to free speech on campus recognized in the Woodward Report, including by assisting community members at risk of government infringement on this right, whether through immigration action or other means.
- Work purposefully and proactively with other colleges and universities in collective defense.
We stand united, asking for your courageous leadership. We look forward to standing alongside you in this work.
Signed,
[Yale faculty of all ranks can sign this letter here.]
A list of over 800 total signatories is available here.
2.5.2024: An Open Letter to President Maurie D. McInnis
Members of the Yale faculty, in collaboration with our AAUP chapter, have written to University President Maurie McInnis, requesting that she take specific actions in response to the new federal administration’s efforts to freeze or cancel research funding and censor scientific communications. We call on President McInnis to lead us in a broad and public defense of academic freedom, and to collaborate with other universities to defend our shared mission of education and research.
We submitted this letter to President McInnis with over 400 faculty signatories. See a copy of the letter and its signatures below.
12.3.2024: A Letter on Immigration Protections at Yale and in New Haven
Dear colleagues and students,
In the days since the election, many people have asked whether Yale will protect immigrant members of the Yale community. As the Executive Committee of the new American Association of University Professors (AAUP) Advocacy Chapter at Yale, we too hold those concerns, and write to share our understanding of the University’s current policy.
At least since 2017, it has been University policy to safeguard immigrant students, including recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). As then-President Salovey stated regarding DACA recipients, “You are an integral part of our community, and we remain committed to protecting your welfare and ensuring that you are able to participate fully in university life.”
The University is to be commended for this long-standing policy, which includes the following measures:
- Making legal support available to students who need advice about their immigration status and options, and ensuring that those who need legal representation will be able to obtain it;
- Admitting and providing financial aid to students without regard to immigration status; and
- Affirming that the Yale Police Department (YPD) does not enforce the civil provisions of U.S. immigration law; that any law enforcement agent who wishes to enter campus is expected to first check in with the YPD; and that Yale does not permit outside law enforcement officers to access the campus without a search warrant or other legal authorization.
The University has affirmed many of these commitments in its collective bargaining agreement with UNITE HERE Local 33, which represents graduate workers. Specifically, it has committed that, unless required by federal law:
- The University will not provide voluntary consent to an immigration agent to enter any non-public area where graduate workers work or live (including all classrooms, research and teaching labs, offices, dormitories, or housing); and
- The University will not provide voluntary consent to an immigration agent to access a graduate worker’s records without a subpoena or judicial warrant.
These well-established policies should provide some measure of reassurance to immigrant students.
At the same time, immigrants at Yale, in New Haven, and throughout the country are facing an unprecedented threat from the incoming administration. To meet the needs of this moment, the University should build on the important commitments it has made in the past by extending legal advice and representation to University staff and their families, particularly those who live in and around New Haven. Doing so would affirm the University’s commitment to the entire Yale community and to the city of which it is a part.
Finally, we welcome all interested and eligible members of the university community to join the AAUP and our Advocacy Chapter in our ongoing organizing around these and other critical issues.
Executive Committee of the Yale AAUP Advocacy Chapter
AAUP Yale 