Students, faculty, and staff at more than 100 campuses across the United States joined coordinated protests on 7 November 2025, marking the first major nationwide response to the Trump administration's controversial higher education policies.
Nationwide Day of Action
The protests, organised under the banner of Students Rise Up, saw educational communities rally against what they describe as an assault on academic freedom. The movement includes both local groups and national organisations like the Sunrise Movement and Campus Climate Network, with support from educational workers' unions including the American Association of University Professors and Higher Education Labor United.
This day of action represents just the beginning of a planned series of nationwide protests, with organisers aiming to build toward large-scale student and worker strikes next May Day, ultimately culminating in a nationwide general strike in May 2028.
Protesting the 'Compact' and Demanding Change
At the heart of the demonstrations is opposition to President Trump's so-called "compact," which offers universities preferential access to federal funding in exchange for advancing the administration's conservative agenda. So far, only one institution - New College of Florida - has accepted the offer, a public school that state legislators have transformed into a conservative bastion.
"Universities should be a place of learning, not propaganda machines," said Alicia Colomer, managing director at Campus Climate Network, speaking ahead of the protests. "That's why students, workers and alumni around the country are taking action."
Across the country, hundreds of students walked out of classes, unfurled banners, and rallied on campuses, often joined by faculty and staff. Beyond condemning the compact, protesters called for more affordable education and protection for all students - from transgender to international students.
Campus-Specific Demonstrations
At the University of Kansas, approximately 70 students demanded administrations divest from weapons manufacturers and Israel, refuse collaboration with ICE, safeguard gender-affirming housing, and meet faculty's demands for fair contracts.
Meanwhile, at Duke University in North Carolina, professors staged a powerful visual protest by taping their mouths shut to condemn Trump's attacks on academic freedom. They held signs demanding the university stand with immigrants, pay workers a $25 hourly wage, and protect trans and international students.
At Brown University in Rhode Island - one of the first institutions to reach a settlement with the Trump administration earlier this year - passersby were invited to endorse protest demands by dipping their hands in paint and leaving prints on banners, while faculty members nearby lectured about the history of autocracy.
"Trump came to our community thinking we could be bullied out of our freedom," said Simon Aron, a sophomore and co-president of Brown Rise Up. "He was wrong."
Targeting Billionaire Influence
In New York City, students and faculty from multiple campuses gathered outside the midtown headquarters of investment firm Apollo Global Management to protest CEO Marc Rowan, a billionaire Trump donor and key architect of the compact whom they say "has no business making policy for higher education."
Protesters cited Rowan's involvement with the online University of Phoenix, which they described as "the largest single producer of student debt in the country," and his role in paving the way for using civil rights legislation to target universities over criticism of Israel.
A spokesperson for Apollo did not respond to requests for comment, though the firm reportedly instructed staff to work from home in anticipation of the protest. In a recent New York Times op-ed, Rowan defended the compact, writing that American higher education is "broken" and that "course correction must come from the outside."
Amy Offner, a history professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told the Guardian that the campaign against Rowan represents a broader effort to protect US higher education from ultra-wealthy individuals' influence. "Billionaires should not control what can be taught and studied in the United States," she stated.
The scale of this coordinated response marks a significant moment in the defence of academic freedom, with Todd Wolfson, president of the AAUP, emphasising on a call with protest organisers that "there is only one way forward in saving higher education and democracy writ large and that is students, faculty, staff united. We have to become a new political force."
