Our fall NYSC AAUP conference on 10/21 focused on solidarity and organizing to protect higher education from the many attacks of the Trump administration aimed at our campuses. The short-term goal is organizing for the 11/7 Day of Action, but the longer-term strategy of organizing Mutual Academic Defense Compacts was raised. The strategy began this spring with faculty governance bodies – specifically the Rutger’s University Senate – and is gaining momentum in light of the Trump administration’s recent introduction of it’s “Compact for Excellence in Higher Education,” rejected by AAUP and AFT leaders as a “Loyalty Oath” compact.

In order to facilitate this conversation within our state conference, this article by Shawn Gilmore in the Fall 2025 edition of Academe, “Mutual Defense Across Higher Education in the Second Trump Era: Do we hang together or hang separately” gives a useful overview.

Stand Together for Higher Education provides links to three models: Rutgers, U Mass Amherst, and SUNY. The SUNY document contains the SUNY University Faculty Senate’s excellent April 26 resolution which included a call for “Chancellor King to reach out to potential allies to coalesce two academic mutual defense compacts—the first a ‘University of the State of New York Alliance’ with the City University of New York, willing New York State signatories of the AAC&U “Call for Constructive Engagement,” and the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities; the second a ‘Public Good U Alliance’…” Additionally the resolution called on “Chancellor King and the SUNY Board of Trustees to urge the Governor of the State of New York—working with the Attorney General of the State of New York, the New York State Comptroller, the Division of Budget, the Board of Regents, the governing boards of all colleges and universities in the state, and the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities—to commit meaningful funding to a ‘University of the State of New York Defense Fund’ that should be used to:
• provide all necessary legal support to students, faculty, and staff in any institution of
higher education in New York State who are personally targeted and attacked by
authorities of the federal government for their political affiliation, participation in
established shared governance bodies, exercise of their academic freedom, or exercise of
their constitutional rights;
• engage in legal actions against the federal government to defend the integrity, principles,
functions, and federal funding of higher education in New York State;
• replace any funding losses to colleges and universities resulting from federal attacks on
higher education in New York State…”