Around a year and a half after her arrest, graduate student Elaf Hasan and the coalition of students and faculty supporting her cause are still fighting to be heard by the administration. 

American University has long boasted of its decades-long history of passionate student activism on social and political issues, ranging from the Vietnam War to the Occupy movement. This history carried itself into the 2026-2027 academic year on Wednesday, September 9, when a coalition of campus organizations including the Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) and AU Rise Up held a protest in the center of American University’s campus. Those congregated demanded, among other things, a reversion of university policies that have been slammed by AU community members as suppressive of free speech, specifically that of pro-Palestinian students and organizations.

To those familiar with the campus culture of American University, this statement is not out of the ordinary. What distinguishes this protest is the public inclusion of another hosting organization: AU’s own chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), a national professor’s union advocating academic freedom for professors and students alike. While having been registered with AU since 2023, the Sept. 9 protest marked their first event outwardly affiliated with student organizations. 

“We all have to stand together,” said John Bracht, chapter president and media liaison for AU’s AAUP chapter and an associate professor of biology. “Faculty need to evolve and we need to step up. And this is just a moment where if we don’t step up, we may never get to step up, right?” 

American University’s chapter of the AAUP first announced itself in a June 16, 2023 release on its website, where it continues to publish statements on faculty affective issues. These statements focus on administration decisions and academic concerns, including the 2024 indoor protest ban and 2023 proposal to arm AUPD officers, and provide recommendations to the school. They created an Instagram to promote their efforts to the wider student body in June 2026.

Early grounds for the faculty-run organization’s presence on this campus was the 2023 hiring of Huron Consulting by AU Administration, which AAUP identified as having an interest in “weakening the job security of university employees (academic and non-academic) and in cutting academic programs” based on their performance at other higher education institutions. With their statement, AAUP presented over a hundred signatures from faculty and staff members alike endorsing their statement. Since then, Bracht feels that the issues they are treating now have escalated significantly since their days working against Huron’s influence.

“We saw the writing on the wall, and we gathered a coalition including SEIU Faculty Union and the students and us, and we fought really hard against Huron’s position on campus, and thinking back on those days, it’s like, wow, that’s kind of quaint… We’re in a different moment of history, and the stakes have just gotten so much higher.”

For AAUP, the campus response to the motion arming AUPD officers was a similar moment of unity with the greater AU community, and a related issue to their current stance against administrative overreach. “The administration was gonna just make the decision, and we came in and we said, no, no, no, you do it with shared governance. This is not something you can rush into. And we won. We pushed really hard with the administration,” said Bracht. After pushback from AAUP and the wider campus community, the motion to arm AUPD officers failed.

AAUP’s commitment to on-campus free speech led to their alignment with a coalition of student organizations such as AU Rise Up and YDSA, who had similarly been advocating for lessened restrictions on student expression on campus. The exact makeup of organizations comprising the coalition could not be disclosed due to protective measures student organizers are taking, said AU Rise Up media liaison Ada Truett-Schriber.

“On our campus, we’ve become very active with the students,” said Bracht, when asked about AAUP’s increasingly public-facing strategy. “When they have protests, we try and support them. When we have protests, they try to support us.”

Further drawing AAUP and the student coalition together of late were significant recent changes to AU’s Registered Student Organization (RSO) manual. The 93 page document, which outlines the rights and responsibilities of student organizations recognized by the university through the Center for Student Involvement (CSI), tripled in length in August 2025 after revisions by the AU administration. AAUP released a statement on the newest RSO manual, where they express concern over vague standards for student organizations and increased personal responsibility for faculty advisors. One new requirement was for faculty advisors to report plans by, or actions of, the students in their organizations that would violate university policy, which was viewed as an effort to stymie student demonstrations that AU admin disagreed with.

“The changing of the RSO manual… essentially forces university faculty to spy on the students that they’re supposed to be representing in their clubs,” said Bracht on the policy, which threatens professors with disciplinary action or losing their jobs if they fail to comply. According to sources familiar with the matter, 60 club advisors resigned their posts over the policy.

The Sept 9. protest had four central demands: a recommitment of the university to freedom of expression and protection of civil liberties for all community members; the reinstatement of AU’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which was suspended by AU admin in 2025; the establishment of an independent oversight committee for AU’s administration composed of students, staff, and faculty; and a formal apology and restitution from AU administration to graduate student Elaf Hasan.

Hasan, who studies international peace and conflict resolution at SIS, has become a flashpoint for the university community’s concerns about free speech and academic freedom on campus after her March 28, 2025 arrest by the American University Police Department (AUPD). After silently holding a Palestinian flag at the inauguration of former AU President Jon Alger, Hasan was escorted out of Bender Arena, where the inauguration was held, and charged with one count of unlawful entry and two counts of threatening to kill the arresting AUPD officers. Based on these charges, she was barred from campus for the remainder of 2025 and placed on suspension by the university’s Office of Student Affairs. 

The charges for allegedly threatening the officers were dismissed by the Superior Court of the District of Columbia on June 2, 2026, with the unlawful entry charge being dropped soon after. The dismissal came after the prosecution was unable to provide any evidence of Hasan ever having threatened her arresting officers, with bodycam footage from the arrest and footage from her interrogation allegedly being misplaced. In an interview with the Rival American, Hasan stated that the judge found the prosecution and AUPD to be acting in bad faith.

Speaking at the Sept. 9 protest, Hasan said that despite the outcome of her case, she remains on probation for the rest of her time at AU and is yet to receive any apology or acknowledgement of her case from the AU administration.

“I find it very cowardly, if you will. After you’ve been found that you’ve accused the student with no lawful justification, and then you don’t show up to even [offer] an apology, or a dialogue, or let’s sit, let’s talk about this,” Hasan said. “Student orgs and also faculty that [have] seen the case, they looked at the evidence and they determined like, yeah, this is essentially bullshit.” Hasan also noted that, as an Iraqi-born Syrian immigrant, the pressing of charges by AUPD would likely have resulted in her deportation if not for her having previously acquired citizenship.

Hasan’s legal representation and co-founder of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, noted AAUP’s strength in national academic freedom advocacy in recent years; a sentiment echoed by Hasan herself, who told The Rival that Bracht was alongside her since the beginning of her public challenges with the administration.

“Solidarity, unity, and no fear,” Hasan responded when asked how both student and faculty organizations alike have supported her during her case and return to campus. 

A particular point of contention for the coalition in regards to AU admin’s restrictions on free speech was the treatment of SJP. Under the tenure of former AU President Sylvia Burwell, restrictions were placed on SJP’s activities before they could join the nationwide wave of Gaza Solidarity Encampments on college campuses in the spring of 2024, and the university adopted policies that were viewed as existing to deter pro-Palestine activist groups. When SJP refused to back down, the university escalated actions against them until finally suspending them from campus in November 2025. The suspension is slated to end in November 2027, with a year-long probationary period afterwards. A campaign for the group’s immediate reinstatement began in March 2026, led by student organizations such as AU Rise Up and YDSA, and was a focal point of the Sept. 9 protest.

When asked about the state of campus free speech under the second Trump administration, Bracht, Hasan, and Truett-Schriber all stated their belief that little, if anything, about the AU administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestine protest would have been different if Trump was not in office, citing the actions of the Burwell and Alger administrations at AU.

“The atmosphere of American University is often one that is just unapologetically Zionist,” lamented Truett-Schriber, who, along with Hasan, named board of trustees member Alan Meltzer as an example of an ongoing force against pro-Palestine activism at AU.

Meltzer, an AU alumnus and the namesake of the Meltzer Center on campus, has been a frequent donor to Israel-affiliated organizations in recent years. Per his tax returns, he donated over fifty thousand dollars to the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), and over three hundred and fifty thousand dollars to the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), as well as funding the Meltzer Schwartzberg Center for Israel Studies on campus. More information on Meltzer’s donations was recently compiled by the AU Anti-Zionist Jewish Student Front.

In spite of ongoing influence from board members like Meltzer, Bracht expressed a cautious optimism to the AU administration’s reception to protest under interim President Dave Marchick, whose term was recently extended to run until the summer of 2028. The Sept. 9 protest saw the coalition deliver their printed demands to Marchick’s office; they were taken by his secretary, who stated that Marchick was not on campus that day. 

Nevertheless, Bracht cited their preceding email correspondence with Marchick’s office as “very gracious,” and reaffirmed appreciation that the administration is willing to communicate. “Even getting a response, that’s something, and he said he would be happy to meet with us… and we really would like to see a shift.” However, Hasan, as well as Bracht and Truett-Schriber, acknowledged that not enough time has passed in Marchick’s tenure for any real difference to have manifested.

 “It is too early to tell, but listening is not enough. We need actions. We need tangible actions. We need to see this campus in a better condition,” Hasan said. Where she didn’t express doubt is the continued necessity of resisting fear and division within the AU community, especially the newfound solidarity between students and professors.

“I want to emphasize to the students and faculty to not let fear overtake our campus… What we can change is here within these walls on this campus. That’s where we can start. So let’s start from here, and let’s unite and let’s fight back.”