Keeping higher education in focus in the 2026 midterms

The AFT/AAUP Blueprint for Strengthening and Transforming Higher Education was the focus of the Higher Education Committee's presentation at the AFT convention in Washington, D.C., on Saturday afternoon.

According to Professional Staff Congress President and Higher Education PPC Chair James C. Davis, the blueprint grew out of the national campaign Saving Lives, Building Futures, Powering the Economy and conversations with thousands of members across the country. Davis praised affiliates who have taken up the campaign's goals and run with them, including at his own institution, the City University of New York, where PSC-CUNY has gotten three of the four contingent faculty who were fired in 2025 for "engaging in protected free speech" rehired. "We're still fighting for the fourth job," Davis said. He also credited the campaign with powering the local organizing and mobilizing that ensured President Trump's "Compact for Academic Excellence" was a failure.

On Saturday, Davis called on AFT members across the country to channel that same energy into supporting the goals of the blueprint: focusing on the midterms and policy solutions to address affordability in higher education; strengthening academic freedom; pursuing job security for all faculty and academic staff; and using our union power to fight for members and students on our campuses and in our statehouses. "Higher education must be a key issue in the 2026 midterms, and we're ready to make sure that happens," Davis said.

Ken Mash, president of the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties, also spoke from the floor about how the campaign is helping to transform higher education in Pennsylvania. APSCUF includes faculty at the 10 publicly owned universities in the state; they, along with AFT Pennsylvania, the Community College of Philadelphia and other in-state institutions have been fighting for the Pennsylvania Promise, a last-dollar scholarship to help make higher education affordable for all Pennsylvanians. Thanks to the "true partnership" of the AFT and AAUP, "we were supplied resources to take action," Mash said. Crucial funding supported polling and a postcard campaign, and when the bill finally came to a vote in the state House of Representatives, it passed with bipartisan support. Mash thanked AFT President Randi Weingarten and AAUP President Todd Wolfson, pledging to continue the fight to fund Pennsylvania's chronically underfunded universities and community colleges.

[Sharone Carmona/Photo credit: Suzannah Hoover]