Under Fire, Undeterred

Randi Weingarten’s lapel tells a story. On one side gleams a small American flag pin. Next to it, a simple silver paperclip. The pairing is deliberate and emblematic: the flag for democracy, the paperclip for resistance. During World War II, Norwegian teachers and students wore paperclips as a silent act of defiance, symbolizing their unity in “binding together” against the occupying Nazi forces. Weingarten, president of the more than 1.8 million-member American Federation of Teachers (AFT), wears both symbols daily to signal her commitment to democracy and solidarity and to declare that she believes public education must defend truth, freedom, and the promise of equal opportunity.

In a highly polarized era, Weingarten has emerged as a dominant figure in many of the nation’s most volatile debates about education. Her supporters—from former President Joe Biden and the NAACP to classroom teachers—praise her as a fierce defender of public education. Critics, including President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, cast her as the personification of what they term “the education establishment.” Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has called her “the most dangerous person in America.” Conservative media outlets like Fox News blame her for pandemic-era school closures and accuse her of politicizing classrooms. Weingarten says the criticism reflects something larger: a coordinated effort to discredit educators and dismantle public education itself.  

A lawyer and a former high school social studies teacher, Weingarten took the helm of the AFT in 2008 after serving twelve years as president of the United Federation of Teachers in New York City. Under her leadership, the AFT has expanded its reach beyond K–12 classrooms to include graduate-student workers, non-tenure-track (contingent and adjunct) instructors, and full-time faculty across higher education. 

In August 2022, the AFT formally affiliated with the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), uniting their memberships and coordinating advocacy for roughly three hundred thousand higher education faculty, researchers, and graduate employees. The affiliation seeks to strengthen collective bargaining, academic freedom, and shared governance nationwide. Today, roughly one in five AFT members works at a college or university. Weingarten has broadened the union’s focus beyond teachers’ rights to include the quality and independence of higher education, particularly as the sector faces intense political and economic pressure. 

In July 2024, the union launched Real Solutions for Higher Education, a campaign that promotes affordability, access, and job security while defending academic freedom and free expression on campuses. The campaign calls for greater public investment, fair pay for faculty and staff, and affordable education that doesn’t leave students burdened by debt. In addition, the AFT has organized graduate-worker union drives at the University of Michigan and at Northwestern University as part of its work to strengthen protections for non-tenure-track faculty and reinforce the principle of intellectual independence.

In her new book, Why Fascists Fear Teachers, Weingarten situates these struggles within a larger ideological battle, arguing that book bans, attacks on educators, efforts to weaken tenure, and legislative attempts to curtail diversity and academic freedom are part of an organized campaign to erode democratic norms. Colleges and universities, she warns, have become the next target. From state legislatures asserting control over public systems to politicians proposing to withhold funding from institutions they label ideologically biased, higher education is being pulled into the same culture wars that have engulfed K–12 schools. “When you undermine colleges,” she writes, “you’re undermining the very institutions that produce knowledge, train civic leaders, and sustain democracy.”

In the following conversation with Liberal Education, Weingarten discusses the forces that are reshaping higher education and how the AFT is responding. She reflects on the importance of civility and provides guidance for those who are trying to lead colleges and universities during turbulent times.

What’s the relationship between the state of public education and the future of the country? 

Attacks on teachers are part of a broader effort to weaken the three main ways ordinary people exercise power in this country: voting, collective bargaining, and education. Public education is essential because it gives people, particularly those not born into wealth, the skills, knowledge, and civic grounding they need to build stable lives and take part in democracy. That is why efforts to undermine it are so dangerous. Throughout history, when equal opportunity has expanded, opponents have tried to roll public education back, from resistance to Brown v. Board of Education—the Supreme Court’s 1954 school desegregation ruling—to current attempts to restrict what schools may teach. The state of public education is inseparable from the nation’s democratic future.

How are legislative efforts in states like Florida, Texas, and North Dakata to weaken tenure and non-tenure-track faculty contracts tied to broader efforts to undermine academic freedom? What responses does the AFT support? 

Current legislative efforts to weaken tenure and non-tenure-track faculty contracts mirror the Supreme Court’s 1980 ruling in National Labor Relations Board v. Yeshiva University, which classified full-time faculty at private universities as managerial employees and therefore denied them collective-bargaining rights. Any move to erode job security undermines academic freedom because it signals that faculty must watch what they teach, research, and say. Higher education depends on the freedom to pursue ideas and take intellectual risks. When lawmakers threaten those protections, they weaken the core purpose of colleges and universities. Therefore, the AFT supports strong tenure, fair contracts, and collective bargaining as essential safeguards for academic freedom.

Non-tenure-track faculty now make up the majority of the academic workforce. What steps is the AFT taking to support these educators and push for better working conditions and job security? 

The AFT’s primary strategy for improving conditions for non-tenure-track faculty is to organize and secure strong collective-bargaining agreements. A contract establishes due process, fair wages, and essential benefits such as health care, which help stabilize the lives of educators who might otherwise hold several jobs. Although legal barriers have long complicated unionization in the private sector, the AFT continues to push for expanded organizing rights and stronger protections. As non-tenure-track faculty has grown across higher education, the union has intensified efforts to raise standards, promote job security, and ensure that all faculty members have the support needed to do their work effectively. 

We’re seeing a rise in organizing efforts among graduate students and non-tenure-track faculty. Why is that? What role is the AFT playing with these efforts across campuses? 

Graduate students and non-tenure-track faculty are organizing for the same reason anyone does: They want a real voice at work and do not want to be treated arbitrarily or like sweatshop labor. Low pay, limited job security, and inconsistent treatment have made collective action essential. Several unions are pursuing this with focus and intention. The AFT plays a supporting role by helping campus groups build stronger and more sustainable organizing models, though the drive is coming from the workers themselves.

What’s at stake for students, faculty, and workers in higher education if the Department of Education is completely dismantled or dramatically reduced in scope? 

What matters is not the Department of Education as an entity but the laws it is responsible for enforcing. We have civil-rights statutes that require college to be affordable and that protect students’ rights, and there must be an agency that can efficiently and effectively carry out this work. If you eliminate the department and the people who administer student aid, loan forgiveness, and disability services and who oversee predatory institutions, those rights simply will not be enforced. Faculty and staff would face a landscape with no federal guardrails for workplace protections, research funding, or institutional accountability. The entire sector would become more vulnerable to ideological pressure, weakened oversight, and widening inequality.

Is there an explicit intention to harm or weaken the sector?

Absolutely. All of this is by design. Look at New College of Florida, which went from a liberal institution to a government takeover and a conservative institution and was the first to sign Trump’s compact, a pledge that conditions federal funding on institutions’ agreement to follow the Trump administration’s ideological directives and limit teaching or research that the agreement designates as objectionable. Turning colleges and universities into ideological litmus tests, as conservative activists seek to do, undermines what higher education is meant to be: a place for real exploration and learning.

In the past year, you have often said we need to “broaden the tent.” Elaborate on what you mean by this and why it’s important. How do you personally reach out to and interact with educators, activists, and policymakers who don’t agree with you? 

I mean that we must create a community where people feel real agency to express themselves, including when they disagree with me. I represent a very big union, 1.8 million people, and I would suspect most of them do not agree with everything I say. I often tell members, “Write to me. Tell me your concerns, your issues, your differences,” and when people do—especially when they disagree—I try to write back. I also interact with very conservative parts of our union because I want to invite conversation. I learn from those exchanges, and I hope others do, too.

We have to model a way of dealing with conflict that does not default to fight-or-flight. Teachers do this all the time. We listen for what is heard and felt, not just what is said. And we try to ground everything in the shared values of dignity, affordability, opportunity. People across the political spectrum are more likely to buy into those values if they feel respected.

If we don't listen to those who disagree with us, we’re not supporting democracy. Democracy means everyone has a voice, even those who oppose us, and broadening the tent is how we protect that.

What’s your message to legislators who are working to pass policies that limit curricular content; ban diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives; or restrict discussions of systemic inequality in the classroom? How might these policies affect students and learning outcomes? 

I would not raise my voice or call anyone names. I would try to look at legislators as human beings and create a conversation rooted in respect, regardless of how I feel about their policies. Then I would ask, “What are you afraid of?” Why fear knowledge or fear kids using that knowledge in ways we cannot yet imagine? Why fear students who are different from one another learning together and feeling safe and welcome? Our diversity is our strength, grounded in democratic principles and in every major religion’s call to love thy neighbor and welcome the stranger. That is the message I would try to convey.  

Lead photo: Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (Damon Winter/The New York Times/Redux)