Faculty members at the University of Minnesota are accusing university leaders of censorship after statements in support of Palestinians were removed from the websites of six U departments and centers.

The University of Minnesota Twin Cities chapter of the American Association of University Professors said the statements were “suddenly and forcibly removed” on Saturday night from the sites within the College of Liberal Arts.

The organization said statements were removed from the sites of the departments of American Indian Studies; American Studies; Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature; Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies; and Asian American Studies, as well as the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

“This not only violates academic freedom but also incinerates First Amendment rights. The answer to disagreement is not censorship. The answer to disagreement is more speech,” said Michael Gallope, who served as the chair of the department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature when the department issued a statement on Israel’s war in Gaza in the fall of 2023.

Gallope said he believes U President Rebecca Cunningham singled out Israel’s war in Gaza as “off-limits” for public comment by university scholars.

The statement that had been posted to the website of Gallope’s department read, in part: “We stand on the principle of academic freedom to speak truth to power and to call for the declaration of an immediate ceasefire, a complete halt to illegal settlements, and an end to the siege.”

But that statement — and the five other statements cited by the professors’ organization — now appear to have been removed from their respective websites.

The university did not respond to a request for comment about the removal of those statements.

Faculty leaders said they learned about the decision to take down the statements from CLA Dean GerShun Avilez during a Zoom call on Saturday.

“It’s unclear why statements related to Palestine were removed while statements on other matters of public concern were not. The provost didn’t even have the courtesy to invite the affected departments to have a conversation first,” Aren Aizura, associate professor and chair of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies, said in the American Association of University Professors press release.

In March, the university’s Board of Regents passed a controversial resolution prohibiting U colleges, centers, institutes and “other academic or non-academic units” from making statements on “matters of public concern or public interest.”

That resolution prohibited colleges, centers and other university units from sharing such statements through university channels. The resolution said it was not intended “to curtail the free expression of individuals within the University community, including faculty exercising academic freedom or other individuals expressing their views on matters of public concern or public interest.”

Gallope said he can’t understand the university’s reasoning for singling out the six statements on Israel, Palestinians and the war in Gaza, and removing them with little notice. He said the statements were attributed to individuals or groups of faculty, and accompanied by disclaimers stating they were not speaking for the university.

“Our expectation at a public university is that we do not engage in arbitrary and capricious censorship of faculty views on the website — instead that we develop a policy, as we have for any other matter, and a policy that can be understood and debated by shared governance, so we understand what the criteria are for public speech of matters of public concern,” Gallope said.

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By ALEXANDRA OLSON and CLAIRE SAVAGE, Associated Press Business Writers

ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) — The acting chief of the top federal agency for protecting worker rights has signaled a pivot toward prioritizing President Donald Trump’s campaign to stamp out diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the private and public sectors.

The initial steps taken by Andrea Lucas, acting chief of the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, have earned her strong backing from the Trump administration, which has moved against DEI through embattled executive orders that dismantled programs at federal agencies and threatened investigations and stiff financial penalties for federal contractors that engage in “illegal” diversity-related practices. Trump recently nominated Lucas, who has long been an outspoken critic DEI practices she argues result in discriminatory employment preferences, to a new five-year term as commissioner.

But former Democratic EEOC officials and prominent civil rights groups have accused Lucas of taking shortcuts that supersede her authority and they have urged employers to be wary of her directives and guidance, if not altogether ignore them.

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The most recent flashpoint involves two “technical assistance” documents issued by the EEOC along with the Department of Justice attempting to clarify what might constitute “DEI-related Discrimination at Work” and providing guidance on how workers can file complaints over such concerns.

The documents take broad aim at practices such as training, employment resources group and fellowship programs, warning such programs — depending on how they’re constructed — could run afoul of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race and gender.

The documents followed letters that Lucas sent to 20 prominent law firms demanding information about diversity fellowships and other programs she claimed could be evidence of discriminatory practices.

A group of 10 former Democratic commissioners and counsels released its own letter Thursday warning the legal community the DEI documents give the misleading impression that common programs “are fraught with legal peril” and dismissed them as reflecting Lucas’s “personal opinion.” The letter offered counter-guidance on how employers should continue implementing training and other practices that EEOC policy documents encourage to prevent discrimination.

Last month, seven of the same former EEOC officials sent Lucas a letter warning that she appeared to exceed her authority with her demands for information from the 20 law firms without first launching a formal investigation. A group of prominent civil rights organizations went a step further in their own letter to Lucas, urging the law firms to ignore her demands because they have no legal obligation to reply.

“This isn’t how the EEOC works. No single commissioner — not even the Chair — has the authority to send threatening letters demanding private information from employers,” said Noreen Farrell, director of Equal Rights Advocates, one of the civil rights organizations that signed onto the response led by the National Women’s Law Center. “The EEOC Chair can’t just rewrite decades of settled civil rights law with a hastily written memo.”

Jenny Yang, a former EEOC commissioner under former President Barack Obama, said Lucas’ letters to the 20 law firms were without precedent at the EEOC, which initiates most investigations in response to complaints filed by workers. In very rare cases, a commissioner can file their own charge against an employer but it wouldn’t be made public and would require the commissioner to provide evidence of possible discrimination under penalty of perjury, Yang said.

Law firms — including some of the 20 targeted by Lucas — are already coming under pressure to change their approach to diversity and inclusion in response to separate Trump executive orders designed to punish them for taking on the president’s rivals as clients and other actions that have angered him. For example, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom recently learned that the president intended to issue an order targeting it over its pro bono legal work and its diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. The firm has consequently agreed to review its hiring practices, among other things.

The 20 law firms targeted in Lucas’ letters did not respond to questions from The Associated Press about whether they intended to respond to her demands. Lucas did not respond to request for comment on the DEI technical assistance documents, and the EEOC declined to say whether the law firms have any legal obligation to respond to her letters or whether they would face any penalty for not doing so.

But Lucas, a Republican who was first appointed to the EEOC in 2020, has long argued that she is not reinterpreting civil rights laws but rather sounding the alarm that many companies have adopted DEI practices that cross the line into discrimination. Lucas has argued the EEOC has turned a blind eye to risky company practices, which she said proliferated especially after the 2020 racial justice protests that followed the police killing of George Floyd.

“Far too many employers defend certain types of race or sex preferences as good, provided they are motivated by business interests in ‘diversity, equity, or inclusion.’,” Lucas said in a statement announcing the new technical assistance on DEI.

Many employers are likely to take heed of her warnings as the EEOC signals that it will be become a powerful ally to workers claiming discrimination stemming from DEI practices.

Anuradha Hebbar, president of CEO Action for Inclusion & Diversity, an arm of the influential Society for Human Resource Management, said the EEOC has especially makes clear that companies should avoid fellowships, internships and other programs that are only open to women or certain racial groups.

Stefan Padfield of conservative think tank National Center for Public Policy Research praised the EEOC’s the shift as a much-needed course correction that will open the floodgates for complaints against DEI practices that should be deemed illegal.

Lucas has acknowledged that she cannot unilaterally change some of the agency’s guidelines and policies that may contradict Trump’s slew of executive orders, though the EEOC has already moved to drop seven lawsuits alleging discrimination against transgender and nonbinary people in response to a presidential order declaring the government would only recognize the male and female genders.

Changing such policies — including the EEOC’s five-year strategic enforcement plan that pledges support for DEI — would require a majority vote by the agency’s five commissioners. But Trump recently fired two of those commissioners — both Democrats — before their terms expired in a move that upended 60 years of precedent for an agency established by Congress as independent and bipartisan.

In their letter Thursday, the former EEOC officials accused Lucas of cherry-picking rare instances of discrimination to convey the message that training and other DEI practices are inherently risky when in fact most are legally sound.

“Our federal civil rights offices and officials should not be intimidating or discouraging employers who are working to advance these goals,” the letter said.

The Associated Press’ women in the workforce and state government coverage receives financial support from Pivotal Ventures. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

NEW YORK — Financial markets around the world are reeling Thursday following President Donald Trump’s latest and most severe volley of tariffs, and the U.S. stock market may be taking the worst of it.

The S&P 500 was down 3.3% in early trading, worse than the drops for other major stock markets. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 1,204 points, or 2.9%, as of 9:50 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 4.3% lower.

Little was spared as fear flared globally about the potentially toxic mix of higher inflation and weakening economic growth that tariffs can create. Prices fell for everything from crude oil to Big Tech stocks to small companies that invest only in U.S. real estate. Even gold, which has hit records recently as investors sought something safer to own, pulled lower. The value of the U.S. dollar also slid against other currencies, including the euro and Canadian dollar.

Investors worldwide knew Trump was going to announce a sweeping set of tariffs late Wednesday, and fears surrounding it had already pulled the S&P 500 10% below its all-time high last month. But Trump still managed to surprise them with “the worst case scenario for tariffs,” according to Mary Ann Bartels, chief investment officer at Sanctuary Wealth.

Trump announced a minimum tariff of 10% on imports, with the tax rate running much higher on products from certain countries like China and those from the European Union. It’s “plausible” the tariffs altogether, which would rival levels unseen in roughly a century, could knock down U.S. economic growth by 2 percentage points this year and raise inflation close to 5%, according to UBS.

Such a hit would be so frightening that it “makes one’s rational mind regard the possibility of them sticking as low,” according to Bhanu Baweja and other strategists at UBS.

Wall Street had long assumed Trump would use tariffs merely as a tool for negotiations with other countries, rather than as a long-term policy. But Wednesday’s announcement may suggest Trump sees tariffs more as helping to solve an ideological goal – wresting manufacturing jobs back to the United States, for example – than just an opening bet in a poker game.

If Trump follows through on his tariffs, stock prices may need to fall much more than 10% from their all-time high in order to reflect the global recession that could follow, along with the hit to profits that U.S. companies could take because of them.

“Markets may actually be underreacting, especially if these rates turn out to be final, given the potential knock-on effects to global consumption and trade,” said Sean Sun, portfolio manager at Thornburg Investment management, though he sees Trump’s announcement on Wednesday as more of an opening move than an endpoint for policy.

One wild card is that the Federal Reserve could cut interest rates in order to support the economy. That’s what it had been doing late last year before pausing in 2025. Lower interest rates help by making it easier for U.S. companies and households to borrow and spend.

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Yields on Treasurys tumbled in part on rising expectations for coming cuts to rates, along with general fear about the health of the U.S. economy. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.02% from 4.20% late Wednesday and from roughly 4.80% in January. That’s a huge move for the bond market.

The Fed may have less freedom to move than it would like, though. While lower rates can goose the economy, they can also push upward on inflation. And worries are already worsening about inflation because of tariffs, with U.S. households in particular bracing for sharp increases. The Fed has no good tool to fix what’s called “stagflation,” where the economy stagnates and inflation stays high.

The economy at the moment is still growing, of course. A report on Thursday said fewer U.S. workers applied for unemployment benefits last week, the latest signal that the job market remains OK overall. Economist had been expecting to see an uptick in joblessness.

But worries about possible stagflation nevertheless knocked down stocks across industries, leading to drops for three out of every four stocks that make up the S&P 500.

Nike fell 12% because so many of its products are made outside the United States. United Airlines lost 10.6% because customers worried about the global economy may not fly as much for business or feel comfortable enough to take vacations. Discount retailer Dollar Tree tumbled 8.5% amid worries that its customers, already squeezed by still-high inflation, may be under even more stress.

Some of the heaviest weights on the market were those that had soared earlier in Wall Street’s frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology. Critics said they were looking the most egregious in a market that overall looked too expensive after prices ran so high in recent years.

Nvidia sank 4.6% to bring its loss for the year so far to nearly 22%. It had more than doubled last year after more than tripling in 2023.

In stock markets abroad, indexes fell sharply worldwide. France’s CAC 40 dropped 2.9%, and Germany’s DAX lost 2.1% in Europe.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 dropped 2.8%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng lost 1.5% and South Korea’s Kospi dropped 0.8%.

AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.

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By ROD MCGUIRK and JAMEY KEATEN, Associated Press

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — The Trump administration appears to be leaving no stone unturned with its sweeping tariffs around the globe, from rocky outcrops home to polar bears in the Arctic to tiny tropical islands to a former British penal colony whose leader is befuddled that it was targeted.

The American president rattled markets, manufacturers and more Wednesday announcing a baseline of 10% tariffs on imports into the United States — and far higher on goods from some places, notably those with high trade surpluses with the United States.

A few countries like Russia, which is facing U.S. sanctions, and Canada and Mexico — which face separate U.S. tariff measures — were left off. The Holy See, for example, got a pass too from being listed among the dozens of countries and territories targeted by U.S. President Donald Trump.

Here’s a look at some target territories that have little to no production, exports or role in the global economy. There was no immediate explanation as to why these places made the cut in a list presented on the White House-affiliated “Rapid Response 47” account on the X social media platform.

Jan Mayen

This small Arctic island, possibly featuring more polar bears than people, figures among the more peculiar places on the U.S. target list.

FILE – The meteorological station on the NorwegIan island Jan Mayen in the Arctic Sea on Sept. 23, 2009. (Heiko Junge/NTB Scanpix via AP)

The only inhabitants on Jan Mayen, part of Norway since 1930, are staff of the Norwegian military and the Norwegian Meteorological Institute. The island — 600 kilometers (370 miles) northeast of Iceland — is partly covered by glaciers.

The Norwegian military’s main role there is to oversee Norway’s claim to sovereignty over the island, it flies C-130 Hercules cargo planes to Jan Mayen about a dozen times a year from Norway.

The planes are able to land only if visibility is good as the airport doesn’t have any instrument landing capabilities.

Norway’s Foreign and Environment Ministries did not immediately reply to requests for comment Thursday from The Associated Press.

Tokelau

The nation made up of three tropical coral islands and home 1,500 people on a combined land area of 4 square miles, is also facing 10% U.S. tariffs.

One of the smallest economies in the South Pacific, Tokelau survives on subsistence agriculture, fishing, and finance from New Zealand, which counts the islands as one of its territories.

Roland Rajah, lead economist at the Lowy Institute, an Australian foreign policy think tank, said officials in small island nations would likely struggle to change Washington’s mind.

“If those countries didn’t get much consideration in terms of what tariffs were imposed on them given their size and obscurity to the Trump administration, that also could make it difficult for them to do anything about negotiating their way out of those tariffs,” he said.

Christmas Island

The leader of Christmas Island, which has fewer that 2,000 people, said the Indian Ocean atoll exported nothing to the United States.

FILE – A group of Vietnamese asylum seekers are taken by barge to a jetty on Australia’s Christmas Island on April 14, 2013. (AP Photo, File)

“There’s no trade between Christmas Island and America except that we do buy mining equipment through Tractors Singapore,” said Christmas Island Shire President Gordon Thomson, referring to the regional dealer for the Texas manufacturing giant Caterpillar Inc.

The Australian outpost located 225 miles south of the Indonesian capital Jakarta has used U.S. heavy machinery to mine phosphate for decades.

“The trade, if anything, is U.S. product into Christmas Island. The only thing that we export is phosphate and that goes to Malaysia, Indonesia, maybe Thailand and a bit to the Australian mainland,” Thomson said.

Heard and McDonald Islands

The Heard and McDonald Islands in the remote Antarctic, which together form another Australian territory — this one uninhabited — is also on the list and subject to 10% tariffs.

The mostly barren islands between Madagascar and Antarctica have two active volcanoes and can only be reached by sea.

Contacted by the AP, the Australian government’s Antarctic Division did not immediately respond when asked about how the tariff might affect its operations in the islands.

Norfolk Island

Norfolk Island in the Pacific, another Australian territory with a population of around 2,000 people, received more severe tariff treatment.

The Trump administration, in its calculation, said the former British penal colony charges the United States 58% tariffs — and it responded with a tariff rate of 29% on Norfolk Island, whose economy revolves around tourism. It’s about 1,000 miles east of Sydney.

Norfolk Island Administrator George Plant, the Australian government’s representative on the island, was looking into what was behind it.

“To my knowledge, we do not export anything to the United States,” he told the AP. “We don’t charge tariffs on anything. I can’t think of any non-tariff barriers that would be in place either, so we’re scratching our heads here.”

Speaking to reporters, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese quipped: “I’m not quite sure that Norfolk Island, with respect to it, is a trade competitor with the giant economy of the United States.”

“But that just shows, I think, exemplifies, the fact that nowhere on Earth is exempt from this.”

Keaten reported from Geneva. Charlotte Graham-McLay in Wellington, New Zealand, and Vanessa Gera in Warsaw, Poland, contributed to this report.