The Association of University Presses (AUPresses) is deeply alarmed by the current flood of US federal government policy upheavals, and the likely effects on individuals, institutions, and the scholarly record.
Motivated by our core values of equity and inclusion, intellectual freedom, integrity, and stewardship, we resolve to speak clearly, on behalf of our global association of mission-driven publishers and in concert with our peers in the wide scholarly community, about the very real threats to knowledge and scholarship that these unprecedented and potentially illegal/extra-legal mandates present.
Our mission as an association—to ensure academic excellence and cultivate knowledge—rings clearly in our support of the statements below. University presses strive to give voice to the breadth of human experience and knowledge. University presses assert that researchers must be freely able to conduct, collaborate on, share, review, and discuss their research, including accurate and comprehensive government research and data. University presses are dedicated to preserving the integrity, rigor, and reliability of the scholarly record and to stewarding it responsibly, not only for today’s scholars and readers but also for future generations.
University presses will continue to champion the freedom to think, research, publish, read, and teach as pillars of an open and just society.
April 2 and 4, 2025. AUPresses joins with the National Humanities Alliance (NHA), the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), the American Historical Association (AHA), and other organizations in condemning the actions taken by the federal “Department of Government Efficiency” against the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).
Read the full statement from the NHA.
Read the full statement from the ACLS, Council of Graduate Schools, and the Phi Beta Kappa Society.
Read the full statement from the AHA.
We agree that cutting NEH staff and funding harms communities in every state and contributes to the destruction of our shared cultural heritage.
These actions also send a disastrous ripple through the entire scholarly ecosystem, catastrophically impacting individual project leaders and researchers as well as their partners in advancing new ideas, including universities, scholarly publishers, librarians, and teachers. Perhaps most importantly, these actions will diminish the very disciplines that drive the development of critical thinking, the understanding of value, and the pursuit of justice and democracy among the next generation of scholars and citizens.
We join in calling on Congress to protect this vital independent federal agency. A truly great society invests in the humanities.
March 18, 2025. The Association joins with the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) in strongly opposing the White House Executive Order designating English as the official language of the United States.
We agree with the LSA that the United States has always been multilingual and that this is a source of the nation’s strength, not an indicator of or fuel for disunity. This executive order, like many others issued by the current administration, attempts to rewrite US history in a way that is fundamentally flawed and simply untrue (see below).
Further, this executive order encourages a dangerous retreat from global, multilingual knowledge. Combined with the US State Department’s recent pause in Fulbright-Hays awards for research and training in non-Western languages as well as the uncertain future of the US Education Department’s International and Foreign Language Education office, this order casts a chill on American scholars’ and publishers’ essential work.
Statements made earlier in 2025
AUPresses Joins in Denouncing Federal Censorship of American History
AUPresses Supports Anti-Censorship Declaration
AUPresses Decries Executive Order on Gender
AUPresses Joins in Repudiating Executive Order on K-12 History Education