"Hands Off Higher Ed!": Campus workers demand end to attacks on diversity and academic freedom

UCW-SC organized a Hands Off Higher Ed Press Conference to amplify the voices of campus workers demanding an end to legislative attacks on freedom of inquiry and expression on SC campuses.

In powerful testimony, speakers addressed anti-diversity legislation targeting SC institutions, including anti-trans bathroom bill H.4756, which passed in April 2026. 

John Kinard, an adjunct instructor of English at USC, notes how these bills have impacted students: “During one of my students’ final presentations this past week, they announced they are leaving USC and South Carolina. Legislation like the bathroom bill has made them feel like they're in hostile territory, so they're going to continue their education clear across the country. It broke my heart twice—the statement itself, and then again the fact that I can in no way tell them they're wrong to do so. The anger I hold toward the people responsible for making any of my students feel like this state and its flagship university can't be a home for them is beyond language." 

Michael Gregory, assistant professor of Philosophy at Clemson University, warns: “South Carolina's public universities cannot compete if they cannot commit to protecting the people within them. Every anti-DEI bill and every assault on academic freedom sends a clear signal to prospective faculty and students choosing between South Carolina and a peer state: you are not safe here. That signal has real institutional cost: top scholars choose institutions that defend them, federal research funding requires the inclusive infrastructure we are busy dismantling, and students, as we have already witnessed, simply leave.”

Josh Dunn, staff member at USC, holds legislators accountable for attacking academic freedom and free speech on SC campuses: “Instead of tackling the real problems that our campuses are facing, lawmakers have chosen to use their power to attack our ability to educate freely and support our diverse student body. They’ve passed a bathroom bill that targets our trans colleagues and students, and in the process, they’ve made our workplace bathrooms less safe and our campuses less inclusive. Again and again, they’ve gone after academic freedom and free speech, with some even going so far as to use their platforms to go after the jobs of individual faculty members. Enough is enough”. 

Kelley Kennedy, staff member at USC, speaks out about the importance of worker solidarity amidst ongoing political attacks on higher education: “Labor unions have to fight back, because we know that an injury to one is an injury to all. We can only build the strength and solidarity we need to organize our workplaces if we show up for each other -- especially when our leaders fail to do the right thing.”

Organizers also publicized the Hands Off Higher Ed Open Letter, which has been endorsed by faculty, staff, and students statewide.

See the full press conference here. Join your union here!