URPE Members: A Call To Action

By Paddy Quick

 

All URPE members are encouraged to provide, by June 15, 2026, accounts of your own direct experience of, and resistance by yourself and others to,  the Trump Administration’s attacks since January 2025 on the educational institutions of which you are a part. [For an example of these attacks, see  https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/16/us/professors-change-teaching-trump.html] This proposal follows a discussion that took place at the URPE General Membership meeting on February 28, 2026.

 

Reports may be anywhere from 50 to 250 words in length but may, of course, provide links to fuller accounts. (Longer submissions may be submitted but may be edited subject to agreement by their authors.)

 

URPE has approximately 500 members who are distributed across educational institutions, large and small, elite and non-elite, with a large proportion of them situated in the United States.  Collectively, we are well situated to provide a more comprehensive picture of what is happening in academia in the US than can be learnt from reports on attacks that receive national or only local attention.  As such URPE can play a small but significant role in sharing information, and through this contributing to the growth of a movement of those who are, or seek to be, actively engaged in resistance to them. This is particularly important for those who are relatively isolated within their departments and their institutions.

 

Accounts by URPE members should not be limited to only those affecting faculty and students within economics departments, but include all those in their institutions whose work contributes to the development of radical political economics.  This includes those who participate in the activities of departments that address relations of class, race and ethnicity, gender and LGBTQ issues, and international relations.

 

These accounts will be collected in June into a single document entitled A Report on Radical Political Economics with US Academia for distribution to URPE members and others.

 

Reports should include:

1. Changes or attempted changes by administrators in the teaching and curriculum of courses, programs and research projects, as well as changes that faculty members have themselves felt obliged to make under pressure and that have led students to limit their engagement in academic discourses.
2. Changes in policies affecting the hiring and promotion of faculty as well as the admission of students. These include changes that are the direct or indirect effect of the Trump administration’s attack on DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) policies.
3. Changes in policies that have a particular significance for international students.
4. The imposition of restrictions on the rights of students, faculty members and all employees on the exercise of their rights to free speech and freedom of assembly.

 

URPE members’ reports must identify the educational institution that they are reporting on and should, if possible, be signed. But as is the practice in journalism, the final report may include information from people who choose not to be identified for fear of possible reprisal, but whose information cannot be independently verified.

 

Reports should be sent to QuickReportonRadPolEc@gmail.com where they will be collected by Paddy Quick and other URPE members for consolidation into a single document.