As you surely are aware, the past few months have been marked by widespread and fast-moving changes across the US government, with many changes having implications for the future of higher education, academic freedom, and federal funding for research and scholarship. APSA is acutely aware that many of these changes are having direct impacts on our members, with many folks in our community losing access to funding for their research, support for their scholarship by their home institutions, and in some cases, their job security.

APSA is working to be vigilant and up to date on recent political activities, whether they come from the Executive branch or from the US Congress. Behind the scenes, APSA maintains a government relations presence to advocate against policies that have negative impacts on our members, with APSA staff actively meeting with folks on Capitol Hill and collaborating with our partner organizations, including other academic societies and advocates for higher education and research funding. APSA has also issued a public statement denouncing the attempted freezes on federally funded research and data, and is considering options to issue further statements on a case by case basis. As part of APSA’s mission and strategic plan, APSA can effectively advocate on the following issues, among others:

• • Support for funding for political science research and scientific research at large

• • Academic freedom, or the freedom to research, teach and learn

• • Defending the legitimacy of scholars and their research on politics and government

We are aware that many of our members are highly motivated to pursue further action, and are looking for opportunities to engage more directly in advocacy. For this reason, we would like to invite our members to participate in our partner organizations’ Action Alerts. Many of our partner organizations, including the Consortium of Social Science Associations, the National Humanities Alliance, and the CivXNow Coalition, maintain action alerts to mobilize constituents to contact their elected officials regarding select issues. Furthermore, we invite our members to engage with the resources on our Advocacy Program webpage, where members can find resources on recent policy developments and how to engage further as an advocate. Members may also contact our Advocacy inbox (advocacy@apsanet.org) if they would like to share updates on policies impacting political scientists or to ask questions regarding how to be an advocate on behalf of the political science community. ■