Read the Amicus Brief here.
April 8, 2025: Thirty faculty groups across the country have joined an Amicus Brief in support of the AAUP v. Rubio lawsuit filed in the Federal District Court in Massachusetts, which urgently seeks a preliminary injunction against ideological arrests, detention, and deportations of non-citizen students and scholars. The Berkeley Faculty Association (BFA), along with the Council of UC Faculty Associations and nine other UC faculty associations, argue that the Trump Administration’s ideological deportation policy violates the First Amendment by targeting constitutionally protected speech that people in the U.S. have a right to hear and engage with.
Following executive orders issued by President Trump in January, the federal agencies that enforce immigration laws have engaged in an expanding range of actions that chill speech and stifle academic freedom. These include revoking the visas of international students for often unexplained reasons, detaining several scholars for deportation based on their Palestine-related speech, interrogating and turning away visiting scholars on arrival, and announcing plans to screen the social media of new applicants for visas to study or work in the U.S. for ideological reasons. As a result, the policy has created a climate of fear and repression on campuses around the country.
The brief gathers together numerous examples of the harms already being inflicted on research and education on U.S. university campuses. Many international students and faculty are avoiding overseas travel to conduct their research, and are even fearful of coming to campus to do their everyday work. Graduate students’ qualifying exams or dissertation work are being disrupted. Some researchers are starting to consider whether they can stay in the U.S. to build their careers. International scholars are rethinking their plans to travel to academic conferences in the U.S., and are more reluctant to move to the U.S. to take up faculty jobs.
The faculty groups signing onto the brief “are united in their view that the federal government’s campaign to single out noncitizen scholars and students for their views, associations, or expression poses an existential threat to the aims and functions of the American university, and to our society’s traditions of free thought and expression.” The brief further argues, “Our universities are world leaders in research. Maintaining that position requires them to be able to attract world-class talent. Defendants’ actions threaten the ability of American universities to do so.”
BFA stands in strong solidarity with the other faculty group signatories across the country – a mix of public schools, private institutions, community colleges, and research universities, from all over the country.