AAUP Sponsors 'Create A Crisis' Campaign to Pressure Universities to Cut ICE Contracts

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) is sponsoring a campaign explicitly designed to 'create a crisis' for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The campaign's stated goal is to force universities to sever their contracts with what it calls ICE's 'key corporate enablers,' marking a significant escalation in the organization's political activism.

The campaign follows the AAUP's selection of Todd Wolfson, a self-described far-left activist, as its new president. Wolfson ran on a platform to transform the AAUP into a 'fighting organization' for social change and has previously labeled Trump supporters as 'fascists' while calling for boycotts of Israel. This ideological direction represents a sharp pivot for the organization, which has faced years of criticism for purging conservative and libertarian voices from faculty ranks, solidifying a progressive orthodoxy within higher education governance.

The move places direct pressure on university administrations, forcing them to navigate between institutional contracts, federal relationships, and internal faculty-led political demands. It signals a deepening institutional conflict where academic governance bodies are leveraging their influence to target specific government agencies and their private-sector partners, potentially creating legal and financial repercussions for compliant institutions.