Trump and his administration are determined to impose their rightwing agenda on the nation’s colleges and universities. They have withheld federal funding for scientific and medical research, using that money to demand compliance.
Trump and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, former wrestling entrepreneur, recently rolled out their “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.”
The Compact asked universities to pledge to do the following:
- When admitting students, institutions must not take such factors as “sex, ethnicity, race, nationality, political views, sexual orientation, religious associations, or proxies for any of the foregoing into account, unless they are institutions “solely or primarily comprised is students of a specific sex or religious denomination.”
Therefore, no factor such as sex, ethnicity, race, nationality, political views, sexual orientation, - Institutions shall have all undergraduate applicants take a widely-used standardized test (i.e. SAT,
ACT, or CLT) or program-specific measures of accomplishment in the case of music, art, and other
specialized programs of study. Universities shall publicly report anonymized data for admitted and rejected
students, including GPA, standardized test score, or other program-specific measures of accomplishments,
by race, national origin, and sex. - To protect a vibrant marketplace of ideas, the signatories agree to foster ideological and political diversity and to “transform or abolish” institutional units that punish, belittle or spark violence against conservative ideas.
- In hiring faculty and administrators, signatories shall not take into account race, gender, nationality, etc.
- Women and men must be accorded separate and appropriate facilities, meaning trans people don’t exist.
- Universities must agree to accept no more than 15% of their students from foreign countries and no more than 5% from any one country. They must also screen them to be sure they are not “anti-American.”
There is much more. Read the text of the 10-page document. It represents a very large degree of government intervention in the affairs of universities. And raises the question: who will police all these requirements?
The administration asked nine institutions to sign on to the Compact. So far, seven of the nine said no. The seven recognized that they were being asked to give up academic freedom and institutional independence in return for a guarantee of future funding.
The administration initially invited nine universities (on or around early October 2025) to accept the Compact:
These are the nine:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Brown University
Dartmouth College
University of Pennsylvania (Penn)
University of Southern California (USC)
University of Virginia (UVA)
University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin)
University of Arizona (UArizona)
Vanderbilt University
MIT was first to say no. Within a few days, the Compact was rejected by Penn, USC, Brown, Dartmouth, UVA, and–most recently– the University of Arizona.
Currently, only the University of Arizona and Vanderbilt are holdouts and are engaging in “dialogue.”
A group of scholars from different political perspectives explained their opposition to the Compact in an article that appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
The article was co-written by Robert P. George, Tom Ginsburg, Robert C. Post, David M. Rabban, Jeannie Suk Gersen, and Keith E. Whittington.
We write as scholars of academic freedom to respond to the proposed “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.” We are politically diverse and do not share common views about the wisdom of particular proposals contained in the compact. Nor do we agree on the extent or substance of the reforms needed in American higher education today. We are, however, united in our concern about key features of the proposed compact.
The compact’s demands that universities and colleges eschew foreign students with “anti-American values” and that they impose a politically determined diversity within departments and other institutional units are incompatible with the self-determination that colleges and universities must enjoy if they are to pursue their mission as truth-seeking institutions. So also is the compact’s demand that universities and colleges select their students only on the basis of “objective” and “standardized” criteria. Colleges may of course voluntarily elect exclusively to deploy objective criteria (such as standardized-test scores and high-school or college grade-point averages), but these standards should not be imposed on institutions which, operating within the law, wish to include consideration of nonquantifiable criteria in selecting students.
Furthermore, we believe that certain aspects of the compact violate core principles of academic freedom. Academic freedom comes with obligations and limitations, to be sure; its essence, however, involves the liberty of faculty within the bounds of professional competence to teach and to research as they choose. The architect of America’s public-private research partnership, Vannevar Bush, asserted that “scientific progress” requires “the free play of free intellects, working on subjects of their own choice, in the manner dictated by their curiosity for exploration of the unknown.” Some of us believe that colleges today are failing in important ways to promote independence of mind and protect academic freedom, but we are united in the conviction that an attempt to solve this problem by government intervention, even if in the form of conditions for eligibility for grants, will be counterproductive.…
As recognized for over a century, faculty should be able to engage as individual citizens in extramural speech. Faculty should exercise these rights responsibly and professionally, but when they fail to do so, it is not the role of the government or the university to sanction them. Colleges that censor their faculty will quickly undermine the vibrancy and initiative so vital for teaching and research.
The power to punish extramural speech has been abused against both conservative and liberal speakers in the past. The requirement of the compact that universities and colleges censor students and faculty who voice support for “entities designated by the U.S. government as terrorist organization” imposes overly intrusive regulation of constitutionally protected speech.
Almost all colleges enshrine the basic principles of academic freedom in contractual agreements with faculty. Elements of the compact seek to use financial incentives to pressure colleges to break these contractual agreements. For a university to bend to this pressure and sacrifice the academic freedom of its faculty is to abandon constitutive institutional commitments essential to both education and the pursuit of knowledge.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I wonder what criteria were used to target these universities in particular. Is there a high level of student protests or foreigners at these institutions? This compact is a deal with the devil as it reinforces right wing biases. For example, participating schools must remain “racially neutral,” but it is acceptable for religious institutions to discriminate against students with different religious affiliations. The compact is an example of federal overreach. The administration seeks to control and impede academic freedom and freedom of speech. No wonder universities are rejecting this insult to the operational autonomy of these institutions. Tim Walz said it best about meddlesome right wing control freaks. He said, “Mind your business.” The so-called party of “small government” should butt out.
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The GOP is no longer the party of local control and minimal government interference. This Compact makes the universities subservient to the state, ie, the federal government. It can turn the flow of dollars on or off to compel compliance. What happens when Democrats are in charge? Do they abolish all this interference or impose their biases?
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When were they ever?
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The GOP favored local control to protect desegregation.
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On a positive note, President Biden completed his cancer treatments at Penn, that fortunately continues to believe in research and science.
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It would amaze me if this rather precipitous cliff is not being negotiated in concert by these 9 universities. I expect the presidents are at least talking to each other.
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Gee you guys left it wide open for me. I have been ranting on about this “Compact” on other forums.
I’ll start with this one:
I thought the requirement to freeze tuition for 5 yrs was ridiculous as well. No amount of gov’t “favoritism” in granting research funding et al perks–as promised in WH press releases– can make up the loss of tuition increase per head over a 5-yr period. Let alone the sanctions actually threatened within the “compact” for breach: access to student loans, govt contracts, grant programs, funding for research, foreign visa student approvals, even tax-exempt status.
Consider that just from ’21-’22 through ’24-’25 school years, total instate 4-yr college tuition rose at average 5% per year– during a period when cumulative CPI inflation rose average 4.3% per year. An important stat, as 73% of US college students attend their own instate public institutions. [I don’t know about private colleges; likely higher].
This is just one more example of fed govt attempting to control the admin of US colleges, like the rest of bullet-points cited. And once one agrees, stand by in 5 yrs and let fed govt tell you how to manage your revenue vs costs going forward? [Can you get out of agreement if Dem admin takes over in ’29?] Absurd.
If this is an attempt to rein in college tuition, it’s thin gruel. For 46 yrs, we’ve lived in a society that barely supports the cost of higher ed. We have minimally-fettered capitalism, with niggardly support for public goods (see healthcare).
Was not true, post-WWII through 1979. Public college was affordable. The last year that was true, typical US ave funding for state college was 65% state, 10% fed, 25% students. Today the ave is 30% state, 15% fed (thanx to increase in Pell grants), 55% students. Most of the disinvestment in state funding for their college systems occurred in the ‘80s. Hence instant hike in tuitions to compensate for lost revenue [largest increase in college tuitions bar none was between ’82-’84].
Since about 3/4 of US college students attend their own in-state public institutions, that bloc essentially determines the market. All those little privates keeping tuitions pegged just above state tuition increased accordingly; the higher-spread privates increased likewise, to maintain their place in the pecking order. (My own little sis attended one of those little privates: her tuition increased from $3k to $10k between ’79-’83.)
Subsequently, states maintained flat funding or chipped away at it; another round of deep cuts in wake of Great Recession.
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For “who will enforce?” reference section X, “Enforcement.” University conducts an annual “poll [?!] of faculty, students and staff; DOJ (!) will review. Sounds to me like a really squishy collection of dubious data—fitting for a vague set of rules that can be interpreted per Trump-dittohead DOJ to decide based on who’s in or out of political favor.
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This is the most onerous of the bullet-points: #2, “Marketplace of Ideas and Discourse.” Elaborated as: “A vibrant marketplace of ideas requires an intellectually open campus environment, with a broad spectrum of ideological viewpoints present and no single ideology dominant, both along political and other relevant lines.”
This is what I call the “political viewpoint audit,” which is simply a new variant of McCarthyism. How does one determine the political viewpoint of faculty, admin, students? Think about what it means to even TRY to determine that—and who gets to determine it, and how. Contrast this with the vast majority of college courses* which have no particular political slant, which simply teach students basic STEM stuff (which has no political slant), or humanities courses, which teach students how to critically examine any/ all sources of info in an effort to weigh supporting documentation & determine to best of abilities where truth lies?
Contrast this with other bullet-points, which seem to be trying hard to promote hiring faculty and admitting students on purely “meritorious” basis, as evidenced by SAT/ ACT, GPA, et al non-political basis. But, oops, add another measure of acceptability: do these people contribute to “the broad spectrum of ideological viewpoints.. along political & other relevant lines”? Shall we establish quotas on that basis?
*Full disclosure: I have to acknowledge that I was disappointed in looking over the current general ed course selection for the Ivy of which I am an alumna. In my day, the core-course curriculum consisted of surveys of entire ed fields one might not otherwise encounter in major, if not reqd due to core reqts. One could deviate a bit. One could, e.g., in psych, take 1 semester of child devpt pych + 1 semester of history of psych—as opposed to Psych 101 & 102 [I chose the former combo, as not interested in stats/ white-rat studies]. Today I find that my U allows substitution, via a long list of 1-semester courses in such fields as soc, psych, lit et al humanities which are frankly culture-war selections, totally based on how things go for LGBTQ et al oppressed marginalized groups, without placing such courses within an overall review of the field & its history… Nevertheless, I see govt long arm into curriculum choices offered as a really bad alternative.
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p.s. The count on which U’s agreed, which didn’t, & which are still in discussions seems to be off. U of Arizona was counted twice (as still discussing, & rejecting)—but U TX at Austin was not counted. They are the one who seems to be onboard of the 9 (tho I don’t know whether that has been confirmed.
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The president of the U of Texas responded to the offer of the Compact that he was “honored” to be on the list to be invited to sign.
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The University of Arizona rejected the offer on Monday. The University of Texas at Austin and Vanderbilt are the holdouts.
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