# AAUP The **American Association of University Professors** (AAUP), founded in 1915 by [[John Dewey]] and Arthur Lovejoy, is the principal U.S. faculty professional association and the leading institutional defender of **academic freedom** and tenure protections in American higher education. AAUP publishes the canonical *1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure*, which remains the authoritative framework cited in faculty handbooks across most U.S. universities, and conducts investigations of administrations that violate academic-freedom norms. For Right Wing KB purposes, AAUP matters as the **lead institutional plaintiff in [[AAUP v. Rubio]]** — the March 25, 2025 federal lawsuit (jointly with the Middle East Studies Association and AAUP chapters at Harvard, NYU, and Rutgers) that challenged the second Trump administration's campaign of visa revocations and deportations targeting noncitizen academics and students for their political speech, particularly speech criticizing Israeli military operations in Gaza. The September 30, 2025 ruling by Judge William G. Young (D. Mass.) — a Reagan appointee — held that the campaign violated the [[First Amendment]], establishing the leading judicial backstop against the broader [[Ideological Deportations]] regime. ## See also - [[AAUP v. Rubio]] — the September 30, 2025 First Amendment ruling - [[Ideological Deportations]] — the umbrella campaign AAUP successfully challenged - [[Chilling Effect]] — the mental model Judge Young's ruling explicitly invoked