Dear President Eisgruber,
The Princeton University community—students, postdocs, faculty, staff, and alumni—stands united in grave concern over the Trump Administration’s attacks on science funding, DEI initiatives, immigration, academic freedom, and higher education.
Wide-sweeping cuts to federal funding threaten the careers of researchers across ranks and disciplines. Targeted attacks on topics like climate change, vaccines, reproductive science, and inequality will do irreparable harm to scholarship and to humanity. The extreme right seeks to limit academic freedom and foster a culture where discrimination, harassment, and hate become normalized. Particularly vulnerable are international students and workers, many of whose immigration statuses are tied to their employment and make up around 13% of undergraduate students, 45% of graduate students, 65% of postdocs, and 12% of non-tenure track faculty (source: 2023-2024 report). Your recent message telling us to “keep calm and carry on” fails to match the gravity and urgency of our precarity. Princeton can and must act immediately and comprehensively to fortify protections for its students and employees as a whole.
To this end, we first call for the creation of a university-wide emergency transition fund to temporarily support any worker whose employment is interrupted or jeopardized by circumstances beyond their control, including sudden cancellation of federal or other grants and disruption of overhead payments. This would allow buffer time for finding workarounds and prevent extreme disruptions to university operations. Princeton is the richest university per capita in the country, and this measure has clear precedents from other universities in similarly volatile situations (e.g., COVID).
Second, we call for increases to workplace protections and rights, including:
- Protections for international workers, e.g., legal support for immigration issues, temporary bridge appointments, and assurances that Princeton will not release our information to immigration enforcement [PUPS-UAW proposal] [graduate students proposal]
- Increased job security, e.g., via longer, multi-year appointments [PUPS-UAW proposal]; transitional funding in case of advisor change [graduate students proposal]; just cause termination and fair appeals processes, equitable compensation, clear information on workplace rights, and advance work schedules [PSW proposal approved 94% by undergraduates]
- Protections against sexual harassment, abuse, and discrimination, e.g., due to religion, country of origin, gender, or political beliefs [PUPS-UAW proposal]
- Rights to protest and political expression [PUPS-UAW proposal]
- The ability to enforce these measures and resolve violations of them through a formal, timely, and unbiased grievance process [PUPS-UAW proposal]
In fact, the university has already received these proposals from the postdocs and scholars union through ongoing collective bargaining. In negotiations, your lawyers and administrators have responded with assurances that existing policies are adequate and that postdocs should put faith in your vague promises to “do your best”. We are deeply disappointed by this stance and call on the university to reach a fair agreement with PUPS-UAW, ensuring real, enforceable protections for international workers, protections against harassment, abuse, and discrimination, and safeguards for academic freedom, as well as grant equivalent protections for all workers at Princeton, from undergraduate theater staff to tenured faculty to librarian assistants.
We make these calls for transitional funding and workplace protections because we care deeply about our academic community and the future of higher education. As students, researchers, and teachers we see it as our responsibility to fight for the values and the missions of the university. We urge you to act decisively, with us, in the face of these unprecedented assaults on the pursuit of truth and knowledge.
Link to signatures: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1t7qUA1D5Cc2LX0EdiO_yI_XeyCKh6_xb3nAet0psD2I/edit?tab=t.0