WE BELIEVE:
- higher education faces an existential crisis as a result of historic and systemic inequalities, deteriorated work conditions for faculty and staff, student and institutional debt, defunding and other neoliberal austerity measures, financialization, attacks on free speech, and assaults on shared governance.
- this crisis was not inevitable and more just alternatives are possible. The collective efforts to build an equitable system of higher education must continue.
WE ADVOCATE:
- Advancing higher education as a necessary and valuable public good for all students, faculty, staff, and communities.
- Facilitating tuition-free student access and fair and equitable labor conditions in higher education.
- Ending the privatization and draining of revenue in higher education by finance and consulting firms.
- Protecting freedom of speech, academic freedom, and disciplinary expertise.
- Building norms of shared, democratic governance in higher education.
- Pursuing racial, gender, and economic justice in and through higher education, including admissions, personnel, curriculum, and engagement with diverse communities.
WE TAKE ACTION TO:
- Study and analyze institutional problems and policy solutions in higher education.
- Share knowledge and collaborate to offer both immediate and long-term solutions to the crises in academia.
- Work with partners to make teaching, learning, and research the prioritized focus of higher education.
- Organize through forums, webinars, and roundtables and through bridge-building among allied groups to promote policy education and action.
- Advocate in our professional and scholarly organizations, our campus groups, and our unions to more directly address the current crises and advance a vision of higher education for the common good.