Welcome to the AAUP Foundation
The AAUP Foundation is the charitable arm of the AAUP enterprise. With the AAUP (a professional association), it shares a commitment to academic freedom and shared governance, defines fundamental professional values and standards for higher education, and ensures higher education’s contribution to the common good.
Featured
Foundation Grant Opportunities
Do you need financial support for a legal case implicating rights of national significance in higher education? Are you developing a project that advances academic freedom or illuminates its role in a democratic society? The AAUP Foundation welcomes inquiries and applications for our quarterly grant deadlines on March 31, June 30, September 30, and December 31.
Journal of Academic Freedom
The AAUP Foundation provides essential support for the AAUP's Journal of Academic Freedom. The 2024 volume examines the rift between propaganda and truth-telling, with articles organized into five thematic clusters—focusing on artificial intelligence, authoritarianism, gender, Black history, and philosophical frameworks—that consider the
A Generous Gift
The AAUP Foundation received a gift from the Academic Freedom Lecture Fund after the Michigan nonprofit corporation dissolved and transferred assets. The fund supported the University of Michigan Senate’s Davis, Markert, Nickerson Lecture on Academic and Intellectual Freedom, named for faculty members suspended after testifying before a House Un
Academic Freedom
The AAUP Foundation supports projects that safeguard academic freedom to encourage free inquiry, promote the expansion of knowledge, and create an environment in which learning and research can flourish, thereby enhancing the quality of higher education and benefiting society.
Featured Grants
Supporting Faculty
The AAUP-Penn chapter remained vigilant as, its executive committee said, "billionaire donors orchestrated a coordinated national assault on Penn faculty and students—slandering our colleagues as antisemites for speaking out against the war in Gaza, seeking to control what could be taught and studied in our classrooms, and attempting to strip us of basic rights to make academic decisions and speak on issues of public concern.
Fighting Educational Gag Orders
Historians for Peace and Democracy engages history faculty members in developing educational resources that counteract legislative threats to academic freedom. "The AAUP Foundation's grant was very helpful for us in putting together our new Honest History for High School Teachers series, which we hope will promote critical inquiry in K–12 education."
Legal Defense
The AAUP Foundation supports faculty members in cases at the trial and appellate levels that implicate important legal rights, involve legal issues of national significance in higher education, and affect the careers of academics.