Dear colleagues,
Over the weekend, I received news that the Wednesday Board of Trustees meeting, at which many of us were looking to speak at, has been cancelled. This follows a couple of concerning developments regarding academic freedom and the university community's ability to engage the administration in dialogue:
- Members who signed up for public comment inside the 11/20 BoT meeting were told by the BoT secretary: “There won't be a public comment session. The next opportunity for public comment will be at the January meeting.”
- An 11/7 written request from PSU’s labor relations team to me, which claims that PSU-AAUP office door signs to keep campus community safe from Federal overreach are “not posted in accordance with PSU’s Chalking and Posting Standards” and “these signs can be perceived as institutional speech.”
- The administration is pursuing an institutional speech policy that could stifle academic freedom and free inquiry at a time when these bedrock principles of academia are under threat nationally.
With the Board of Trustees meeting cancelled, I’d ask that you instead please join me in the Monday, December 1st, Faculty Senate meeting and be ready to ask the administration about these and other pressing concerns. See my full open letter to President Cudd and the Board of Trustees below.
Additionally, see OPB, Inside Higher Ed, and International Business Times coverage of the binding arbitration ruling, which reversed the layoffs of 10 of our NTTF colleagues.
In solidarity,
Bill Knight
President, PSU-AAUP
Open Letter to the Portland State University Board of Trustees and President Ann Cudd
November 2025
To the Portland State University Board of Trustees and President Ann Cudd:
News that the November 20 Board meeting was scheduled to proceed as a special meeting without public comment has raised real concern across campus. Now we have learned that the November Board meeting is cancelled altogether, leaving the campus community a gap in Board engagement and input until January 2026. The university is about to make decisions with far-reaching consequences for students, for programs, and for the people who do the day-to-day work of keeping PSU running. At a time like this, many in our community are looking for ways to understand the situation and to participate in shaping the path forward. Removing the chance to speak directly to the Board makes that considerably harder.
Through shared governance, PSU has always promoted the ideal that listening to its own community is part of how a public university meets its obligations. When financial pressure is high and structural change is underway, the need for open communication increases rather than diminishes. Members of the PSU community are trying to make sense of what lies ahead, and the Board’s decisions will influence their work and their students’ experience for years.
Faculty and staff also hold a kind of practical knowledge that is difficult to capture in formal reports. They see where students struggle, where programs are stretched thin, and where small policy shifts carry significant implications on the ground. These perspectives are not ancillary to the Board’s deliberations. They are part of the information a governing body should hear before acting, especially when the institution is preparing for major change.
With that in mind, we ask the Board and President Cudd to take steps that would allow the university community to participate meaningfully:
- Convene an open forum at an alternative time, so people can speak to the issues directly in front of the Board;
- Include written comments submitted before the forum in the official Board of Trustees record;
These actions would help maintain trust during a difficult moment. They would signal that the university’s leadership understands the importance of hearing from the people who live with the consequences of these decisions. And they would reinforce PSU’s stated commitment to shared governance, transparency, and collaboration.
Portland State has always identified itself with the city it serves. That identity depends on a culture of openness—on the idea that the university listens before deciding. We ask that this principle guide the approach to the gap left by the canceled November 20 meeting and the prospect of further public comment before the Board.
Respectfully,
Bill Knight
President, PSU-AAUP