On May 1, several dozen students, faculty and community members gathered beside Western Carolina University’s “Catafount” in Cullowhee for a May Day action celebrating the history of labor organizing — and demanding the rights workers have yet to be afforded. 

On May 1, workers, students, and families across the nation rallied, marched, and took action across the country to demand the nation puts workers over billionaires. The National Education Association (NEA), a key organizer of May Day events, helped lead a march in downtown Washington, D.C.—one of 4,000 events nationwide.

Holding signs reading “Workers over Billionaires,” “No ICE—Stop the Deportations,” and “Teachers Deserve More,” the demonstrators began Friday’s rally in the nation’s capital across from the White House and ended at Franklin Square.

At the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, protesters connected labor demands with concerns over reported local immigration enforcement activity...

On May Day, organizers including graduate employees, undergraduate groups and local unions delivered these demands to the university, calling for protections against Immigrations and Customs Enforcement for students and workers. The proposals include restricting ICE and Customs and Border Protection agents’ access to campus buildings, canceling contracts with corporations that collaborate with immigration enforcement and providing support for students and workers facing deportation or visa revocation.

Academic unions from across New York City converged at 3 p.m. outside The New School’s University Center for a May Day rally. Partway through, members of the New Student Workers Union (NewSWU), faculty, and alumni split off and entered TNS Welcome Center at 72 Fifth Ave. to deliver a petition demanding union recognition for residential workers.

May Day or International Workers’ Day, celebrated annually on May 1, is a celebration of laborers and the working class promoted by the international labor movement. 

The rally, organized by the NYC Committee on Higher Education, started at the University Center before marching to Washington Square Park to meet with other unions. Those who split off folded into a separate demonstration, reflecting a semester-long fight for ResLife unionization. 

The May Day Strong website lists several Boston-area events, including campus actions, labor rallies, standouts, and a main Boston Common rally.

Students Rise Up (SRU) is a national campaign of students and workers across the country organizing protests against Trump and authoritarianism on their campuses the first Friday of each month, leading to a national day of walkouts and strikes on Friday, May 1. The campaign, initiated by a coalition of the Sunrise Movement, youth organizations, and, critically, educator unions, points to the type of escalated action we need to fight back against Trump and ICE: a mass movement of students and workers, leveraging the power of the working class to shut down production.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison Sunrise Movement and Students for a Democratic Society protested the Trump Administration’s Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.

On Nov. 7, students, faculty and staff rose up at more than 100 universities and colleges across the country and said, “no more.” Through teach-ins, rallies, walkouts and marches, university communities rejected President Donald Trump’s attempt to control academia and vowed to set a better course for the future of higher education, particularly as the country approaches the 2026 midterm elections.

“Tell Billionaire Marc Rowan Hands Off Higher Ed! No Com­pact, No Loyalty Oath, No Oligarchs,” read one banner in Manhattan, where AAUP mem­bers and allies rallied outside the offices of Rowan’s Apollo Global Management on the November 7 Day of Action for Higher Ed. With signs, bullhorns, and soli­darity, faculty members in New York City sent a powerful mes­sage: Higher education serves the common good and is a bulwark against authoritarianism and oligarchy.

On Thursday afternoon, about 120 Brown students and faculty members gathered at the Van Wickle Gates for a rally urging the University to not sign the Trump administration’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.” 

Students, faculty and staff at more than 100 campuses across the US rallied against the Trump administration’s assault on higher education on Friday – the first in a planned series of nationwide, coordinated protests that organizers hope will culminate in large-scale students’ and workers’ strikes next May Day and a nationwide general strike in May 2028.

This Friday, November 7, students, faculty and campus workers across more than 100 college and university campuses will hold nonviolent actions under the banner of “Students Rise Up” to reject broad attacks on higher education’s freedom to learn, speak and organize. 

Members of the American Association of University Professors, the affiliated American Federation of Teachers and student groups are planning protests in more than 50 cities Friday against “the Trump administration’s broad assault” on higher ed, the AAUP announced in a news release.

Aiming to “organize millions of students to disrupt business as usual and force our schools and our political system to finally work for us,” progressive groups and labor unions are planning a nationwide day of coordinated protests at over 100 US campuses on Friday, November 7.

Planned by Students Rise Up, in coordination with the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and Higher Education Labor United (HELU), the upcoming demonstrations “will be the first in a series of nationwide days of protests leading up to student strikes and worker actions on May Day 2026,” according to organizers.

The Labor for Higher Education coalition recognizes American higher education as a public good and a bedrock of our democracy. However, the current crisis in higher education of declining public fund­ing, ballooning student debt, and widespread job insecurity threatens that promise and jeopardizes learn­ing and working conditions for millions of Americans.

The Raleigh demonstration was organized by the North Carolina State University Graduate Workers Union, Workers Union at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke Graduate Students Union. 

The protests supported a reversal of the Trump administration’s proposed funding cuts to the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Education. According to the Kill the Cuts website, the plans are “abandoning families who are suffering and costing taxpayers billions of dollars.”

HELU started ramping up organizing well before the election, bringing major unions into a coalition that produced a Statement of Unity in October 2024. The need to strengthen labor power through this coalition—Labor for Higher Education or L4HE—was evidently important before Trump’s election. It has become even more vital since then.