The Executive Board of the Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union voted on Monday, March 31, 2025 to endorse the following demands by the Joint Union International Workers’ Solidarity Committee. The endorsement passed with a tally of 12 yes votes and 2 abstentions (12-0-2).

1. The Rutgers administration must not share data related to faculty,  students, and staff with any law enforcement, including campus police  or federal agencies (like HSI, DHS, and ICE) without a judicial warrant. For example, they should not identify individuals from photographs or videos, and should not provide home or email addresses, phone numbers, academic or employment records, publications, or faculty course content and syllabi. They should also notify the people involved if any such data has already been shared with these governmental agencies and provide them the data that has already been shared. 

2. The Rutgers administration should stop surveilling the student  body and not allow previously collected surveillance data to be used by federal agencies currently targeting non-citizens. The administration on all the Rutgers campuses (New Brunswick, Newark, and Camden) should delete any videos and footage from drones of the encampments, demonstrations, protests, and rallies (for Palestine and other causes), unless they are currently under litigation. Rutgers should also order Public Safety and private contractors to cease collecting  personally identifying information of Rutgers affiliates in relation to protest activity. 

3. The administration must establish Rutgers University as a  sanctuary campus (across New Brunswick, Newark, and Camden) in which every student is protected from threat of deportation or detention. We define a sanctuary campus to mean the following: A commitment not to allow DHS/ICE officers on campus or into university housing without a judicial warrant under any circumstance and to inform all security personnel and other staff of this policy. The administration must also designate non-public zones of safety on campus that students, staff, and workers can access during the threat of ICE raids on campus, and publish a map to communicate these safe zones to our community. 

4. The Rutgers administration should defend the students and workers  on our campus who are not US citizens by taking actions to resist their targeting by the Trump administration and other anti immigrant actors. Specifically: 

• File a lawsuit to have Trump’s January 29th 2025 Executive Order 13899 (Additional measures to combat antisemitism) revoked or halted. 
• Designate the reporting of Rutgers affiliates to immigration  authorities based on their perceived or assumed immigration status as a  form of discriminatory harassment. 
• Notify students/workers whose names are provided by the  government to the university as targets for detention and of any  government agency’s search, arrest, administrative warrant, subpoena,  or other formal or informal request for documents or information on a  student/worker. 
• Protect students who have already been disciplined for political  protest by reinstating, re-enrolling, and un-expelling students who have  already been disciplined. 

5. The Rutgers administration should have dedicated lawyers and legal support staff on hand to provide immigration support for faculty, staff, and students subject to governmental discipline or deportation. They should proactively arrange the retention of legal counsel for any Rutgers affiliate detained or threatened by HSI/DHS/ICE.  

6. The Rutgers administration should organize regular know your  rights trainings for international and domestic students, faculty, staff,  and workers – especially for those who live in university accommodations and for the administrative staff at these accommodations. 

7. Rutgers must respect democratic governance and due process, including university senate resolutions, and Title VI anti-discrimination processes. Rutgers must ensure that these Title VI protections are applied consistently to prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, color, nationality, ethnicity, caste, and religious backgrounds. The university should also commit to ensuring that internal grievance/complaint procedures (especially those based on Title VI) include adequate procedural safeguards. For example, people should not be locked out of  their campus housing while being subject to an investigation.

8. The Rutgers administration must clearly reject the weaponization of  antisemitism accusations used to justify the Palestine exception. This  means the administration should refuse to adopt rules banning  specific phrases or concepts, such as “From the river to the sea” and  “intifada”, and the use of the words “genocide” and “settler colonialism”  in connection to Zionism. The administration must also refuse to adopt,  or comply with, any definitions of antisemitism, including the IHRA  definition, that falsely conflate interrogation or criticism of Israel and  Zionism with anti-Jewish bigotry. 

9. Rutgers University should abide by the promises that it made  during the New Brunswick and Newark encampments – which  include refusing to suspend or take any disciplinary actions against  organizers of the encampments and other pro-Palestine protests and  actions. The organizers of the union divestment vote should not be  identified by Rutgers or have any action taken against them for their  involvement in the divestment campaign. The administration should also  commit to not use immigration status as leverage to coerce any  students/workers into disciplinary proceedings. Both our unions and the  University senate support the right to protest on college and university  campuses.  

10. The administration must commit to supporting workers and  students affected by the proposed Muslim Ban 2.0 and ensure  protections for international workers unable to return home due to travel  bans. This includes financial support during breaks and prioritization for  summer employment and campus jobs. We remind the university that  CILRU was broken into and vandalized on Eid al-Fitr last year, one of  the most violent and hateful attacks on a U.S. campus in recent  memory. Islamophobic discrimination must be taken seriously and  proactively addressed, especially in New Jersey, which has the highest Muslim population density in the country. 

11. The administration should refuse to engage in anticipatory obedience, such as removing academic programs, altering websites, censoring syllabi, course materials, and course titles. These acts of  censorship driven by pressure from politicians and donors pave the way  for institutional control. The administration should instead uphold the  principle of academic freedom, integrity, and resistance to political and  financial coercion. It must roll back the ‘free expression guidelines’ issued in Summer 2024 and work with the union and student community to cultivate a safe atmosphere for workers and students. Any type of time, place, or manner restrictions placed on protests or public gatherings should be avoided as it infringes on academic freedom and first amendment rights of the Rutgers community. 

12. Rutgers University must maintain DEI efforts and programs despite the acute attacks on these by the federal government.  Specifically, the Rutgers administration must actively counter  targeting of personnel in the department of Women’s, Gender, and  Sexuality Studies and other targeted departments by engaging with  directly endangered faculty and staff and creating plans of action  to address possible escalated actions by federal authorities. Rutgers  must also adopt the recommendations of the Caste Task Force Report  that have been accepted and adopted by the Rutgers Senate. 

13. Rutgers University must re-establish in writing its commitment to  ensuring the safety and protected status of LGBTQ+ students,  faculty, and staff as their community faces heightened attacks from the current administration. This should include dedicated action items for maintaining enrollment and on-campus housing security for LGBTQ+ students, and continued access to healthcare services for LGBTQ+ students, and academic freedom protections and job  security for LGBTQ+ faculty and staff and for those who are engaged in teaching and researching topics related to LGBTQ+ issues. 

14. The Rutgers administration should commit to ensuring that all international students and faculty are able to maintain their legal  status within the university. Rutgers should reissue DS-2019 and/or  I-20s for all international students and faculty when their visa status is  expired, and not leverage the re/issuance of immigration documents as  retaliation for participating in free speech activities. 

15. The university must appoint faculty, staff, and students who are  vulnerable to attacks from the federal government to calendar year appointments (rather than academic year appointments), to guarantee their immigration status and job security. 

16. The university must grant instructors the flexibility to move  classes online, for students to confidentially demand hybrid instruction, and for staff to work from home and formulate adequate anti-doxxing and anti-harassment policies to support members of our community who are under attack by the federal administration. The University Senate resolution from February 2024 has advised similarly. 

17. Rutgers University must not revoke any degrees that are already  conferred to students based on university disciplinary proceedings or  federal investigations. Rutgers must assure degree conferral,  including through alternative routes in case of administrative  impediments. Rutgers must also not revoke current tenure/tenure  track procedure/promotions for faculty and staff based on federal  investigations for participation in protests or actions.