‘Identify university board members who are defunding higher education by supporting, advocating, and profiting from Trump-Musk policies’
Activist professors upset over the Trump administration’s massive funding cuts, Education Department downsizing, diversity, equity, and inclusion bans, and foreign student VISA repeals have set their sights on a new target: colleges’ and universities’ regents and trustees.
In a “research” meeting Thursday hosted by the left-leaning American Association of University Professors, organizers said protest campaigns will now include an effort to identify and harass regents, trustees, and boards of governors who side with President Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
The AAUP brought in professional agitators from the Action Center on Race & the Economy to lead the meeting and help organize the directed attack campaign against campus leadership.
ACRE’s board of directors and advisory committee include representatives primarily from teachers unions and the AFL-CIO, as well as from various social justice nonprofits and progressive non-governmental organizations.
Its executive director, Saqib Bhatti, “works on campaigns to win racial and economic justice by taking on the corporations responsible for extracting wealth and resources from communities of color and poor people,” according to his online bio, which also notes he comes “from an immigrant Muslim family from Pakistan.”
Professors attending the meeting were asked to incorporate trustee targets into the association’s upcoming nationwide Day of Action on April 17.
“We want to take the fight … to their corporate offices,” one organizer said during the meeting, according to an attendee who spoke to The College Fix on the condition of anonymity.
The scholars cited the protests against Tesla dealerships as having been valuable and cutting into Musk’s profits.
“When we have a regent that has a conflict of interest, they are probably the same people deciding the economic agenda, profiting at the expense of us and other members of our communities,” one professor said during the meeting. “They are probably avoiding taxes, buying our politicians, and leveraging their economic power. That’s what we’re here to interrupt.”
Professors at the meeting were told they represent the “front lines.”
“We cannot allow board members and trustees to be supporting the Trump-Musk agenda while also pretending to represent the interests of your institutions of higher learning,” one organizer said. “We need to identify their ties. We want actionable research to support the action you will be leading later this month and in May.”
To that end, attendees have been sent a shared Google spreadsheet with a stated research goal to “Identify university board members who are defunding higher education by supporting, advocating, and profiting from Trump-Musk policies.”
NEW: Activist professors to target regents, trustees in new wave of anti-Trump, Musk protests
In a “research” meeting Thursday hosted by the left-leaning American Association of University Professors, organizers said protest campaigns will now include an effort to identify and…
— The College Fix (@CollegeFix) April 12, 2025
“In order to efficiently identify Trump-Musk connections for as many University Board of Trustees as possible, we will spend 10 minutes performing a news scan on each board member with the key words below and record our findings in this spreadsheet. Once we’ve found initial ties, we will do a deeper search,” the spreadsheet states, with listed steps for scholars to follow:
Step one: “Find your institution’s tab in the following spreadsheets or create one if it’s not already listed.”
Step two: “In your institution’s tab, copy and paste the names of all the trustee listed on the school’s page. Search ‘school name’ + ‘board of trustees.’”
Step three: “Look up ‘[board member name]’ + ‘bio’ or search for bio on the school’s Board of Trustees page. Identify the company they’re affiliated with.”
Step four: “Conduct the following searches, link any relevant hits in the spreadsheet:
“[board member name]” + “Trump”
“[board member name]” + “Vance”
“[board member name]” + “Trump” + “donor”
“[board member name]” + “campaign contribution”
“[board member name]” + “tax cuts” OR “budget cuts”
“[board member name]” + “Elon Musk”Step five: “Conduct a name search for political contributions on Open Secrets. Summarize findings in the spreadsheet”
During the meeting, the group also shared a Genocide Gentry map that purports to “presents the educational and cultural ties to board members of 6 defense corporations.”
While the association and its agents are not calling for violence or graffiti, it is not unheard of for social justice and anti-Israel campus activists to target trustees.
For example, University of Michigan leaders and members of its Board of Regents have repeatedly had their homes and businesses protested at and vandalized. However, the end result was their recent decision to completely defund and dismantle DEI at the university.
IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: Professors and students protest DEI cuts at an Ohio campus in March / KBNSNews, YouTube screenshot
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