Over 18% of Yale faculty fear arrest over teaching – Survey

A new study by Yale University’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) found that almost one-fifth of professors who responded to a survey on academic freedom reported that they were “significantly concern[ed] about being arrested in connection with their teaching”.

While the survey did not ask ‘why’ professors were concerned, the authors of The State of Academic Freedom at Yale (Academic Freedom at Yale) write that this stunning number “reflect a sense that the rule of law is in question today (as prosecution and detention are increasingly being used to target political opponents) alongside worries about the recent unlawful detention of students and travellers by the Trump administration and crackdowns on campus against Gaza protestors, which led to many arrests”.

Almost double the 18.1% of professors who fear being arrested, 35.6% of tenured faculty fear being disciplined by their university’s administration for their teaching, which is almost four percentage points higher than the total sample, which includes non-tenured faculty.

This, the report says, “stands as a useful reminder that tenure is not a vaccine against anxieties and that academic freedom protections must be stronger across all ranks and schools”.

According to Amy Kapczynski, the John Thomas Smith Professor of Law and faculty director of the Global Health Justice Partnership and executive member of the AAUP Yale Chapter, Academic Freedom at Yale shows that the “partisan attack on higher education in the United States is undermining learning and research on campuses across the country and even in relatively well-protected campuses, like the one I teach at”.

While not as famous as Harvard University (Cambridge, Massachusetts), the nation’s oldest university, founded in 1636, Yale (New Haven, Connecticut), founded in 1701, is the second oldest Ivy League university.

It is also the second richest; in June 2025, its endowment stood at US$44.1 billion, second only to Harvard’s US$56.9 billion. In 2025, US News & World Report ranked Yale as America’s fourth best university.

Yale was not among institutions, such as Harvard, Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania, that the Trump administration targeted in its first months in office over charges of allowing antisemitism to fester on campus or for violations of civil rights because of diversity, equity and training offices and programmes.

However, according to the Yale Daily News, as of 22 April 2025, Yale had lost grants totalling US$42.7 million from the National Institutes of Health for programmes in LGBTQ+ and public health research.

Early this month, Yale found itself in the Trump administration’s ‘crosshairs’ when Harmeet K Dhillon, assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division, informed Yale that his office had determined that the university had intentionally discriminated in favour of Black and Hispanic applicants to its medical school in violation of the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that declared affirmative action unconstitutional. Yale disputes Dhillon’s finding and intends to fight it.

The 177 professors who responded to the AAUP’s survey represent Yale College (its undergraduate school) and almost every professional school. Eighty-seven per cent are US citizens and 69.5% are US-born.

Approximately 60 respondents are tenured faculty, with a similar number being instructional faculty, while 11.5% are tenure-track faculty; the remainder hold ‘other ranks and appointment types’.

Anonymous complaints

According to Kapczynski, the report’s results “show that things are not great at Yale right now and that certainly, if there's any perception that Yale has skated through unscathed, that is not the experience of faculty”.

More than half (56.3%) of faculty surveyed fear that one of the measures Yale, as did many other universities, recently brought in, anonymous reports against professors, will be used against them.

“Even among tenured faculty, 63.3% reported significant concern about anonymous complaints from students and over a quarter (26.7%) indicated that they are ‘extremely concerned’ about this possibility,” the report notes. One half of professors fear being fired or not having their contracts renewed.

Anonymous complaints about their research and/or public engagement, originating from beyond the university’s gates are even more concerning. Fully 61.6% of respondents indicated they were “extremely or somewhat concerned” about such complaints. A slightly smaller percentage, 59.9%, are “extremely or somewhat concerned” about being doxxed or publicly harassed.

Non-US citizens know they are uniquely vulnerable, with 70% being “extremely or somewhat concerned” that their visas will not be renewed.

Self-censorship

To understand the gradations of how Yale’s faculty are experiencing academic freedom since Trump’s return to office, the survey used a 1-5 point scale. More than half, 53.4%, said their academic freedom had “Decreased somewhat”.

Almost 15% indicated it had “Decreased a great deal”. Just over 30% indicated there had been no change and 0.8% said that their academic freedom had increased.

Academic Freedom at Yale also included qualitative responses. One respondent indicated that they “feel like a frog in a pot of water on the stove, with the temperature slowly heating up.

The line between what is acceptable and unacceptable is changing, slowly, over months – for what counts as controversy, for what assumptions and beliefs students bring to the classroom, for how Yale regards the value of what I teach and research . . . We are slowly moving in the opposite direction of fulfilling a university mission to generate and disseminate knowledge.”

Since Trump returned to office, faculty have altered many aspects of their professional behaviours. One third now avoid “controversial topics in class or lectures”. Presumably the same respondents also answered that they have either changed or are reconsidering teaching plans. More than 15% have altered the language of their course outlines to conform to the perceived zeitgeist.

While only 4% say they have cancelled a scholarly talk or conference presentation, Kapczynski underscored that this is still disturbing because it shows how fear undermines academic exchange: academics who study things such as the hantavirus, she says, learn much by attending conferences where they can interact with other cutting-edge researchers.

Withdrawal from public engagement

Further, it became clear in my discussion with Kapczynski that there is a line between these 4%, who are extremely cautious with regard to conferences and the much larger figure of 21.5% who say they have “Jettisoned scholarship on controversial topics altogether”.

The line continues, Kapczynski averred, to two other striking figures: 47.5% of faculty have “Stopped or avoid[ed] posting on social media about controversial topics” and 30.5% of faculty would have refused my request to interview them on this survey, as they “have stopped speaking with journalists about controversial topics" – and this despite the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech enshrined in the First Amendment.

“It’s striking how much withdrawal from social media and speaking to journalists there has been. I think one of the values we [professors] can really provide to the public is when we’re asked about our research, whether it’s on an emerging virus or on what really happened in World War II. We provide insight and in making our work approachable, we contribute,” said Kapczynski.

But, if the government is going to weaponise the broader environment, as they did when faculty were fired over comments about Charlie Kirk’s murder and go after faculty’s jobs, she continued, people are going to react to protect their jobs.

Fear of government fiat and concern that the university will not protect its professors is so great at Yale that 20% of respondents “reported that they no longer use their Yale e-mail to communicate about their scholarship, research or creative work”.

According to Kapczynski, “faculty feel like they have to manage risks on their own now and that really is affecting what we teach and research and say.”