Breaking: 30+ human rights groups demand universities dismantle surveillance & protect free speech

Rights groups call on university leaders to defend their communities against the Trump administration’s ongoing attacks by rolling back surveillance.

Today Fight for the Future sent a joint letter to the administrators and trustees of 60 top universities in the U.S. demanding they roll back surveillance and invasive data collection on their campuses. The letter was signed by more than 30 rights groups––including Amnesty International USA, Center for Constitutional Rights, Access Now, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC)––and is being delivered to university administrators as they revisit and refresh a range of campus policies for the upcoming school year, including protest policies.

The organizations assert that invasive data harvesting practices and the tracking of campus community members are fundamentally at odds with freedom of expression, and they urge universities to:

• Refuse to cooperate or share data with law enforcement agencies seeking to target international students, activists, immigrants, and other vulnerable groups.
• Expunge unnecessary data that has been collected and retained on faculty, students, and staff; secure any remaining data with end-to-end encryption.
• Discontinue the use of invasive technologies and practices, including ID swipe tracking, online activity monitoring, facial recognition programs, license plate readers, motion and heat sensors, WiFi vendors that collect location data, and biometric online exam proctoring programs.
• Reject mask restriction policies.
• Provide community members with information on doxxing and measures they can take to protect themselves from doxxing.

“Spying on students for engaging in peaceful protest and expression is a clear attack on Constitutionally protected rights and has no place in higher education,” said Michael De Dora, US Advocacy Manager at Access Now. “Surveillance of students for exercising their basic rights threatens privacy, chills freedom of speech, and erodes trust. University administrators must reject these harmful practices and affirm that dissent and protest are not only essential to learning, but protected rights that demand firm, transparent safeguards.”

“Rather than making communities safer, campus surveillance policies play into the hands of federal agents carrying out the Trump administration’s unjust targeting of international students, immigrants, and activists by supplying location data, names, faces, and other personal tracking details,” said Leila Nashashibi, Campaigner at Fight for the Future. “If university leaders are serious about defending their communities against these attacks, there are practical steps they can take right now as part of their broader efforts to fight back: data minimization, improving data privacy, and the dismantling of surveillance systems.”

The letter was sent to the 60 universities that are being threatened with funding cuts if they fail to suppress protests on campus––an attack on higher education that the president of Princeton University described as “the greatest threat to American universities since the Red Scare of the 1950s.” While many of these universities have spoken out strongly against the Trump administration’s assault on academic freedom and free expression, few have taken concrete steps to defend the rights of their students and faculty, including their right to privacy.

Accompanying the joint letter, Fight for the Future and COVID Safe Campus recently published a scorecard that tracks university policies on masking––an emerging “battleground policy” that has become a focal point for university administrators seeking to crack down on campus protests. The scorecard demonstrates that some universities, including Georgetown, have recently ratcheted up mask ban policies as a concession to the Department of Education and organizations like the Anti-Defamation League that oppose pro-Palestine student movements.

Recipients of the letter have been requested to respond with information about their current surveillance-related policies and positions by Sept 30, 2025. As Fight for the Future receives more information from administrators, we hope to expand our public policy tracking to include campuses’ use of tools like facial recognition and their regulations on data sharing with law enforcement. This would build on years of campaigning alongside university students and faculty members against surveillance on campus. Past initiatives include a scorecard tracking campuses’ use of facial recognition in 2020/2021, and a letter from more than 150 faculty members denouncing the use of facial recognition on campus.

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