In late April 2025, I stood alongside my Emory University colleagues outside the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters. We were there both to support the individuals illegally terminated by the Trump administration and to witness the abrupt dismantling of a scientific and public health infrastructure. We hoped, given the interdependence between Emory and the CDC, that a public response of support from Emory’s administration would follow, but it never came.
What followed instead was Emory’s silence on the canceling of grants, silence on student visa cancellations and silence in the face of national calls to commit to academic freedom. Silence in the face of anti-democratic attack is capitulation; Emory must defend its independence from federal control.
To help achieve this, faculty members launched a campaign in April: Stand Up, Emory!, a good-faith effort to join the faculty and administration together in declaring the indispensable values of our private institution and meaningfully push back on federal overreach. Faculty involved in the campaign have spent the last six months holding meetings, communicating with other faculty and students, interacting with administration and mobilizing in defense of the values core to our university. As we have done that work, the sentiment we have encountered most frequently across all levels of the University — from faculty, staff, students and even administrators themselves — is the stifling fear of retaliation.
Unfortunately, this fear is not new to Emory’s campus — it has percolated for some time. However, this fear crystallized in spring 2024 following calls from outside political agitators for on-campus crackdowns on peaceful pro-Palestinian protests on the University’s Quadrangle. Emory’s former administration responded by calling in the Atlanta Police Department, who in turn called in Georgia State Police, resulting in the gassing, arrest and removal of its own students and faculty to clear the campus. These actions solidified a culture of paranoia that assembly, expression and dissent on campus might be met with violence and academic retaliation.
Following that conflict, Emory’s administration worked with faculty to develop a robust new Open Expression Policy to prevent similar outcomes in the future. Students and faculty have relied on this policy to guide responses to more recent political intrusion on campus. While fear among the faculty has not dissipated, we have at least understood the rules of the game.
The new understanding, created by the new Open Expression Policy, was shattered by the School of Medicine’s firing of a faculty member in September. This decision followed a private Facebook post about the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, which drew conservative influencer attention. The School of Medicine terminated the professor without process, in direct violation of the Open Expression Policy that establishes free speech and which the administration agreed to support. Emory’s Faculty Council has now formally called on the administration to revisit this decision in accordance with that policy.
I sympathize with Emory's relatively conservative Board of Trustees, which is likely also operating in fear at this moment. Continually trying to convince students and faculty that our core values are intact while assuring the federal government that the so-called radical leftists on campus are well-heeled must be exhausting. But allegiance is revealed through action. As University leadership has had to choose between keeping Emory in good standing with conservative governance or maintaining its core democratic values, it has frequently chosen the former.
Emory’s new administration now faces a critical decision in whether it will require the School of Medicine to abide by University policy and reconsider the termination in light of its Open Expression Policy. If they do reconsider, there is an opportunity to rebuild trust among the Emory community. Failing to uphold these commitments will reaffirm to students and faculty that any individual action taken by the administration is currently justifiable to pacify a federal government increasingly intolerant of independent thought. In that case, we will continue to operate out of fear.
The defense of open expression on college campuses has never been more important, as the federal government now explicitly offers universities economic stability in exchange for academic freedom. The Emory administration’s choice not to consider this initial offer to join a government compact for American universities is a step in the right direction. But this will almost certainly not be our last encounter with the government, and Emory must continue to stand up and push back. In the meantime, we must also have our own house in order to ensure we can build back a culture of open expression across our campus.
There is a path forward, but it’s not in silence. I believe that the Board of Trustees, University administration, faculty and students ultimately all want the same thing: an Emory free to engage with the most pressing issues of our time. That’s why I established my lab at Emory to begin with, and I’ve been proud to call this institution my home for more than a decade. Sadly, anti-democratic assaults on higher education have become the most pressing issue we face, and fear of retaliation at any level of our university must not interfere with the critical work of asserting and living out our core values. Emory must reject a culture of silence and fear and stand in defense of the open expression and academic freedom that serves as the bedrock for all that we do.
Matthew Woodruff is an assistant professor at the Emory University School of Medicine. He is a co-founder and organizer of the faculty initiative Stand Up, Emory!
