- November 2025
ACLS promotes inquiry into all topics across the many fields and interdisciplinary areas represented by our member societies. The pursuit of knowledge is not partisan, and we resist all efforts to make it so. But as some areas of study have come under concerted attack, it’s important to restate our steadfast support for them and for the scholars who have dedicated their professional lives to their advancement.
- October 2025
“The White House “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” would essentially transform American academia into an arm of the federal government. We hope that the chorus of voices speaking up against the letter convince decisionmakers on campus and in state capitals of the serious danger it represents, from Joseph Fishkin’s Balkinization blogpost and Siva Vaidhyanathan’s essay in the New Republic to the Wall Street Journal editorial page.”
- September 2025
“We believe it is important to state—and restate—our own commitment to academic freedom and raise readers’ consciousness of the crisis of democratic speech simmering on many American campuses. We are proud of our partnership with PEN America, and we strongly encourage all readers to support organizations dedicated to reporting on and resisting censorship.”
- August 2025
“We believe our responsibility to speak out publicly about the damage to research across the arts and sciences in the United States is all the more urgent at a moment when many institutions have been silenced by the current administration’s “divide and conquer” approach. We are sympathetic to the individuals and institutions feeling the immediate pressure of cancelled grants in the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars and the bleak future of scant public funding for research and the circulation of knowledge. Independent organizations like ours are better placed to call out the false grounds on which the administration is attacking higher education and the harm it is doing.”
- June 2025
“One way to fight back against the destruction of the nation’s capacity to produce knowledge is litigation, such as the lawsuit ACLS brought together with the AHA and MLA to redress the damage done to the National Endowment for the Humanities. As we work on this action, we’re reminded every day of the irreplaceable role professional societies play in the resistance to the federal administration’s war on knowledge.”
- May 2025
“In this moment, the impulse to pull our heads in and protect what we can is strong. But together with nearly 650 presidents of colleges, universities, and national organizations supporting higher education in the United States, in an April 22 statement led by Lynn Pasquerella of the American Association of Colleges and Universities and Laurie Patton of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, we believe it is time to fight.”
- April 2025
“Long term, I’m convinced that we urgently need to build alliances outside academia so that our fields have a greater base of support. This means greater attention to attracting and retaining undergraduate students, creating meaningful relationships with interested people in public libraries, high schools, and other local contexts, and making the creation and circulation of knowledge more inclusive and dynamic on all fronts.”
- March 2025
“We are aware of and deeply concerned by the mass lay offs at the Department of Education, and will keep you apprised on their impact and responses by us and other organizations.”
- February 2025
“Here at ACLS, we are determining how we can ramp up our advocacy for humanistic knowledge. While we will not be hiring a lobbyist at this stage, we are actively engaging the networks and allies that we already have. We are supporting our member societies in their own advocacy efforts and sharing examples of success in strengthening humanistic programs with college and university leadership in our Research University Consortium and Associates network, to show how they can mobilize their communities to sustain humanistic inquiry for the next generation. “
