Heather Steffen | 06 August 2026 | AAUP Academe Magazine
In the United States today, scholar-teachers are experiencing a well-coordinated, well-funded, and government-backed campaign to disrupt their ability to educate and produce knowledge without fear of retaliation or harassment. Professors are spending time that could be devoted to teaching and research securing themselves against doxing and online harassment, inventing new ways to talk about banned topics, and educating themselves about disciplinary procedures.
A sustained campaign against academic freedom can change everything about the conditions of academic labor for as long as it lasts—and for a long time after. Amid rapidly shifting government dictates and a climate of public distrust, many faculty members now experience fear rather than intellectual excitement when considering controversial topics. In the classroom, they worry that politically motivated actors will record or report them for supposed violations of laws about teaching, that complaints of bias and discrimination will be weaponized against them, and that provocateurs will interrupt their classes.
I direct Faculty First Responders (FFR), a small, volunteer-led organization that is testing mutual-aid strategies to defend academic workers against politically motivated harassment and to support them when they experience it. As an AAUP partner, FFR complements the work of the AAUP’s Department of Academic Freedom, Tenure, and Governance (DAFTG). The staff members in DAFTG advise and assist faculty members and others with respect to AAUP policy standards on academic freedom, tenure, and governance. Working in tandem with DAFTG when appropriate, FFR serves academic workers facing a broad range of challenges arising from targeted harassment, including but not limited to those related to their employment. In addition, FFR monitors how right-wing online news sites like Campus Reform and The College Fix cover higher education, and we watch for articles that name and attack academic workers of all sorts—faculty members, staff, administrators, graduate students, and postdoctoral employees. When we identify a smear attack in the right-wing media, we reach out to the named worker to offer resources and peer-to-peer coaching. The resources cover digital security, doxing defense, and how to navigate and survive a campaign of harassment. The peer-to-peer coaching evaluates workers’ concerns, needs, and threats and matches them with available resources. FFR serves as a hub linking academic workers with others who can help. Fulfilling our mission involves a lot of hours listening to scholar-teachers’ stories, responding to the emotions they produce, and strategizing about how to survive academic freedom crises.