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Should Women’s Colleges Admit Trans Women?

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2026 //
13

The Trump administration is suing Smith College–one of the nation’s most elite women’s colleges–for admitting transgender women to its student body, a policy adopted in 2025. Trans women were male at birth,

My own college–also an elite women’s college–asked the student body in 2023 about whether to admit trans women. The final vote was not disclosed but it passed; students appeared to be strongly supportive of the change. When the New York Times wrote about the debate at Wellesley, my classmates and I had our own debate. Like the old fogies we are, we were uncomfortable that our stodgy, traditional alma mater was admitting men who transitioned to become female.

But when I visited the campus, I saw a different reality. The students really don’t care about gender identity. They welcome other students and close ranks around those who are vulnerable. Wellesley is a women’s college; the students welcome others who identify as female. It’s a non-issue.

But it’s not a non-issue to the Trump administration. At every opportunity, it tries to eliminate the very existence of trans people. And that’s why it is now taking legal action against Smith.

The Boston Globe wrote about the new offensive against Smith College:

NORTHAMPTON — For more than a decade, Smith College, one of the nation’s largest and most prestigious all-women schools, has admitted self-identified transgender women, with little public blowback. 

But after the election of President Trump to a second term, Smith’s policy inevitably caught the attention of an administration consumed with eliminating any form of diversity practices in higher education. Late Monday, the federal government announced it had opened a civil rights investigation of Smith for its admission of transgender women. 

Smith got on the administration’s radar via a conservative watchdog group in 2025, when the college awarded Admiral Rachel L. Levine, a transgender woman and former US assistant secretary for health under President Joe Biden, an honorary degree and invited her to be one of the speakers at the school’s commencement ceremony that May. 

At the time, the news “piqued my interest as to what the policies were relative to single-sex admissions and gender identity at the college,” because Smith receives federal funding, said Sarah Parshall Perry, vice president of the conservative group, Defending Education.

In June 2025, Perry filed a federal civil rights complaint with the US Department of Education that has since morphed into a government investigation probing whether Smith’s admissions policy violates Title IX, the law prohibiting sex discrimination in education programs that receive federal assistance.

The investigation could have implications for other women’s colleges, including Mount Holyoke and Wellesley, which both admit transgender women.

“Title IX contains a single-sex exception that allows colleges to enroll all-male or all-female student bodies — but the exception applies on the basis of biological sex difference, not subjective gender identity,“ the US Education Department’s Civil Rights office said in a statement Monday.

“An all-girls college that enrolls male students professing a female identity would cease to qualify as single sex under Title IX,” the statement said.

A spokesperson for Smith said the school is aware of the investigation and “fully committed to [Smith’s] institutional mission and values, including compliance with civil rights laws,” but “does not comment on pending government investigations.”

Levine, the first openly transgender federal official to be confirmed by the Senate, is a favorite target of Republicans, drawing particularly intense criticism for her opposition to government-imposed restrictions on transgender care for minors, which she has called a health equity issue. The Trump campaign featured her image in ads attacking Kamala Harris on trans rights issues in the 2024 presidential race.

The Defending Education complaint argues Smith discriminates against “biological women” by admitting students whose assigned sex at birth was male but identify as female, while barring students whose assigned sex at birth was female but identify as male.

The US Department of Education did not respond to a Globe request for more information on Tuesday.

Perry, who served as a high-level official in the Department of Education during the first Trump term, said the investigation should encourage Smith to agree to a resolution with the administration.

“Smith College, obviously, is under no obligation to receive federal funding, but once they do, they have to follow federal civil rights law,” she said. “Smith can’t have its cake and eat it, too, by saying, ‘We’ll give lip service to Title IX, but we will violate the spirit, letter, history, and plain text of Title IX at the same [time].’ ” 

If Smith wants to keep its current policies, she added, it can rely on private and state funding instead.

Shiwali Patel, senior director of education justice at the National Women’s Law Center, said the probe is proof the Trump administration is more interested in “focusing on fake problems than addressing the actual issues that women and girls are facing in education.” Patel also argued that admissions to private undergraduate colleges are exempt from Title IX’s requirements. 

“The Department of Education’s investigation into Smith College is not civil rights enforcement. It’s the weaponization of Title IX and its protections,” she said.

Within hours of the Trump administration’s announcement of the investigation Monday, colorful chalk messages began to appear all over Smith’s campus: “You belong here,” “We love our trans sisters,” “Trans people belong at Smith.”

The college also alerted the campus community about the investigation via an email that shared mental health and other resources. 

“We recognize that this development is very difficult for our community,” wrote Alexandra Keller, dean of the college and vice president for campus life.

Margot Audero, a transgender woman in her senior year at Smith, understands her college’s need to be cautious, but she also wants to hear its leaders speak up.

“This does fundamentally change the calculus,” she said. “Smith no longer has the option of staying out of the spotlight. . . . I do think they have the opportunity to loudly state their values.”

The Smith investigation is part of the White House’s broader campaign against transgender rights. On his first day back in office, Trump pledged to “defend women’s rights” by recognizing sex as immutable and binary — biologically male or female — and ordered federal agencies to “ensure grant funds do not promote gender ideology.”

The administration has since pursued a raft of antitrans policies, from blocking federal funding to hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to minors to mandating the removal of transgender personnel from the military. It even changed Levine’s name on her official portrait to her previous name, NPR reported.

The legal and political fight has resurfaced divisions over the difference between sex and gender, along with what it means to be a women’s college today. Both Smith and Wellesley have evolved significantly since first opening their doors around 150 years ago, while Mount Holyoke College, founded in 1837, is the most gender-inclusive of the trio.

Mount Holyoke dubs itself “the leading gender-diverse women’s college” and welcomes everyone but cisgender men (who identify as male, in accordance with their assigned sex at birth). Wellesley admits students who live and consistently identify as women.

Smith currently “considers for admission any applicants who self-identify as women,” including those who are cis, trans, and nonbinary, according to its website. The college changed its admissions policy to include self-identified transgender women in May 2015, amid pushback from some alumnae. 

Genny Beemyn, director of the Stonewall Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, a resource for the LGBTQ+ community on campus and beyond, wasn’t surprised by the DOE investigation of Smith. 

What is surprising is that “it took this long, quite honestly, given the [Trump] administration’s hatred of trans people,” Beemyn said.

As a nonbinary educator who often speaks publicly about transgender issues at schools across the country, Beemyn is receiving far fewer invitations as colleges keep a low profile to avoid the glare of the Trump administration. 

Campuses are “scared to do trans events, to have trans speakers, to demonstrate that they support trans rights . . . because they’re so fearful of being targeted, being singled out, being attacked, maybe having federal funds taken away,” Beemyn said, adding that institutions should be careful, but not invisible in the fight.

Beemyn noted that they’ve also heard from transgender students at UMass Amherst and other schools “who are feeling like they don’t have a lot of support because their administrations are not coming forward and saying, ‘We support you.’ And that makes a difference.”

Last fall after Perry filed her complaint, Smith president Sarah Willie-LeBreton told the Globe she hadn’t heard from the DOE and wasn’t prepared to “offer legitimacy” to it by commenting. “Our admissions policies are firmly within the law,” she said at the time, “and we’re very proud of those policies.” 

Now that a federal investigation of Smith has been announced, “The proof will be what Smith decides to do in response: if they capitulate, or if they stand up and say, ‘This is something we value, and we are not going to give into the administration,’ ” Beemyn said.

Categories Gender, Higher Education, Trump

Hungarian Voters Oust Viktor Orban!

By dianeravitch
April 12, 2026 //
31

In what appears to be a historic turnout, voters in Hungary ousted Viktor Orban!

This is great news for NATO and bad news for Trump and Putin, who lauded Orban as the future of Europe. MAGA loved Orban, who claimed to have created an “illiberal democracy.”

Orban was a European version of Trump, censoring or closing down anyone who disagreed with him. He harmed freedom of the press, universities, and the judiciary. He stridently opposed LGBT rights.

The victory of Peter Magyar, who seems to have won more than 2/3 of the seats in Parliament, means a new day for Hungary, NATO, and the European Union.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Democracy, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Higher Education, International

Stephen Dyer: Ramaswamy Wants to Cripple Public Higher Education in Ohio

By dianeravitch
April 6, 2026 //
4

Vivek Ramaswamy is running for governor of Ohio.

Stephen Dyer, former legislator, current budget watchdog, warns that Ramaswamy wants to close some of Ohio’s institutions of higher education and make the cost of college even higher for the families of Ohio.

Vivek’s proposal to close public colleges follows years of Republican disinvestment in higher education and public education. Rising costs cause enrollments to decline. Declining enrollments are then an excuse to close colleges.

Why does Ohio want a less-educated public?

Please open the link to his excellent article to read the footnotes.

Dyer writes:

They’re hoping you don’t notice.

Notice that for 30 years, Ohio Republicans have slowly starved higher education funding, which has made the $1 million promise of a college education less attainable for middle-class families.

They’re hoping you fall for the anti-college mythology — they waste money, are giving kids diplomas for basket weaving, are full of hippies. Whatever. They don’t care. Just buy it, already!

They want you to blame anyone but them, even though it’s all their fault.

A personal note. I’m a tuition-paying parent for a public university student.

It’s now more expensive to send my son to Ohio State as an in-state resident than it was for my parents to send me to Tufts University in the 1990s.

Yeah. That’s crazy.

But that cost hike wasn’t because Ohio State is so inefficient or concerned with basket weaving majors that I’m paying through the nose for my son’s education¹. 

Nope.

Ohio Republicans made this happen. They’ve steadily made the unattainably expensive college degree a reality since they started dominating the statehouse and Governor’s mansion in 1994. In fact, it seems the two things they’ve consistently done from a public policy perspective is de-fund both public K-12 education and higher education.

The numbers don’t lie.

So, for example, in 1979, 11.6% of the state budget went to pay for the State Share of Instruction (SSI) — the direct funding portion of the state’s higher education budget that essentially subsidizes in-state tuition (it does more than that, but trying to keep it simple). That was the highest proportion on record.

Next year, it will be 4.7% — the lowest on record. 

If the state committed as much of the state budget to SSI next year as it did in 1979, the state would be providing $3.2 billion more just to SSI. 

How much is that, you ask?

In the 2024-2025 school year, the total tuition collected by all 2-year and 4-year public higher education institutions by all students, in-state and out-of-state, was $3.6 billion. 

That’s right. 

If Ohio had maintained the same commitment to its college students that it did in 1979, we could have tuition free — or essentially free — 2- and 4-year public universities for every Ohio resident … and then some. 

But we don’t even have to go back to 1979. If you went back to the last time the percentage of SSI funding went up under Gov. Ted Strickland in the 2009-2010 school year, you’d have another $1.6 billion. Or if you went back to the first year Republicans had complete governmental control — 1994-1995, you’d have $1.8 billion.

Wanna bet whether Ohio’s public 4-year institutions would be facing an “enrollment crisis” if tuition were reduced this much, Vivek?

Yet for some reason, Ramaswamy seems to want to make closing University of Akron and Kent State University — and the elimination of tens of thousands of jobs — a tentpole of his gubernatorial bid. 

As a former stat legislator who used to represent parts of Summit and Portage counties — where those two universities reside — I’m gonna say that’s certainly a strategy.

A fucking stupid one. 

But it’s a strategy.

This is not rocket science. As state commitment drops, the burden placed on college students and their families increases. The correlation is strong, as my buddy Claude pointed out here²:

Notice there’s a little blip in the percentage during the FY10 and FY11 years. Just as a reminder, those were the only two years of a politically divided legislature and Democratic Governor.

As an aside, you’ll recognize a similar blip on the state share of public K-12 education funding during this same period — the only year on record that more state than local property tax funding paid for Ohio’s public schools. 

By the way, did I mention this all good stuff happened in a budget I helped negotiate during the height of the Great Recession? Please excuse my shameless public policy prowess plug (and alliteration).

Every other year on that chart, Ohio Republicans controlled every lever of power. And the pattern is clear:

  1. Defund the state funding stream that makes college affordable for working families
  2. Make that option far less affordable for those same families
  3. Then when fewer students attend the universities that rely on first-generation students (Kent State and University of Akron come to mind, don’t they Vivek?), blame the universities
  4. Count on everyone both not noticing the steady drain of resources while they get hooked by the “out-of-touch” higher education narrative 
  5. Call on the schools to stop focusing on educating our students and instead become corporations’ training arms
  6. Or, in the case of the Ohio GOP’s billionaire gubernatorial candidate, shut them down

This is all Republicans’ fault. They didn’t have to do this. There wasn’t some crisis that forced them to divest from SSI since they took power. 

In fact, according to the most recent Grapevine report, while student share of higher education cost has gone up since 1980, it’s been by 18 percentage points nationally. 

In Ohio, that increase has jumped 24 points. 

The average Ohio student has to come up with 57 percent of their higher education cost. The national average is 39 percent — still way too high for a country that has to rely on innovation to dominate the world economy. 

But Ohio is 46 percent worse than that. 

In only 10 states do families have to pay a higher share of the higher education freight than Ohioans.

Since 1980, Ohio has cut its appropriations for higher ed overall by 14.8 percent. The national average over that period was a 13 percent increase.

Look. I know Vivek wants to shutter two of the state’s main economic and intellectual engines because they struggle with enrollment. But that struggle isn’t because of what he says — inefficiency, lack of excellence (whatever that is), etc.

I think that spending 30 years dropping the share of the state budget going to subsidize tuition below 5 percent for the first time ever might explain why fewer kids go to college in Ohio than they used to and why enrollment at first-generation universities — whose students typically come from working-class backgrounds — has struggled to grow. 

Yeah. 

That sure as hell seems more likely than whatever the fuck Vivek is imagining under his Jimmy Neutron hair. 

Categories Budget Cuts, Elections, Extremism, Funding, Higher Education, Ohio

A Song About Trump’s Education Policies: “We Believe in Local Control”

By dianeravitch
April 1, 2026 //
4

A good way to start off April Fool’s Day is by listening to this song by a group of young people in Colorado. The lyrics were written by Kevin Welner and are posted at the website of the National Education Policy Center.

The Trump regime says clearly “We believe in local control.” Except when they don’t.

Trump has issued executive orders about what may or may not be taught. Trump’s executive order #14253, signed on March 27, 2025, was titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” What it meant in practice was to censor any teaching or displays that showed the shameful aspects of American history, and to focus instead on “patriotic history.”

Trump has launched a campaign to oust diversity, equity, and inclusion, as well as gender studies, African-American studies, and studies of other groups.

Trump has tried to seize control of institutions of higher education institutions by falsely accusing them of anti-Semitism. He has sought to control the admission of students, the curriculum, and the hiring of faculty.

Trump has taken institutions of higher education hostage by withholding or cancelling billions of dollars for research into medicine and science unless they turned control over to the federal government.

But, as the song says, “We believe in local control!”

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Cruelty, Curriculum, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Health, Higher Education, Lies, Trump, U.S. Department of Education

Bad News: Federal Judge Approves Trump Administration Request for List of Jews at U of Penn

By dianeravitch
March 31, 2026 //
9

This is bad news indeed. The Trump administration, in its ongoing campaign to harass institutions of higher education in the U.S., demanded a list of Jews from the University of Pennsylvania. The university, as well as Jewish groups, objected.

The Trump regime says it is combatting anti-Semitism on campus and wants to collect evidence. The university believes this is an intrusion into private and personal information.

What reason is there to trust the good faith efforts of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice? Under current leadership, it has tossed aside all efforts to defend the rights of historically marginalized groups. It fights DEI and any programs that are intended to help Blacks, Hispanics, women and LGBT individuals. The leader of the Civil Rights Division, Harmeet Dhillon, has devoted her career to fighting civil rights law.

Frankly, their sudden obsession with anti-Semitism is likely to cause an explosion of anti-Semitism. Maybe that’s their goal.

As a Jew, I say to the Trump regime, “No, thank you.” I don’t want my grandchildren in your census. It stinks.

The New York Times reported on a federal judge’s decision to let the Trump thugs collect the information they want.

The Trump administration was within its rights to demand that the University of Pennsylvania turn over information about Jews on campus as part of a federal investigation into discrimination at the school, a federal judge decided Tuesday.

The government’s investigation had united Penn leaders with Jewish students and faculty members as they opposed the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s subpoena. Many on campus drew parallels between the government’s approach and methods deployed in Nazi Germany.

But the Trump administration has said that its request was typical for discrimination investigations to seek potential victims and witnesses, and Judge Gerald J. Pappert of Philadelphia’s Federal District Court agreed on Tuesday. He gave Penn until May 1 to comply with the administration’s subpoena, though the ruling appeared unlikely to quell the debates around how the administration has pressured top American universities.

In his ruling, Judge Gerald J. Pappert of Philadelphia’s Federal District Court said Penn “relies on two federal-court opinions which hurt, not help, its position.”

Judge Pappert, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, appeared to hint at the discomfort that the government’s subpoena had prompted and at the accusations that the E.E.O.C. had gone too far with its tactics, especially a demand for information tied to groups “related to the Jewish religion.”

Categories Bigotry, Democracy, Higher Education, Pennsylvania, Racism, Religion, Separation of church and state

Students Applying for College Must Be Wary of DEI!

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2025 //
4

Back in the days when the Republican Party was actually conservative, Republicans believed in small government. They said repeatedly that the federal government should not interfere with decisions made by local governments and private institutions.

The Trump administration is not conservative. It believes that it should impose its ideology on every kind of institution and every level of government.

Trump’s personal hatred of immigrants, of affirmative action, of any kind of program to help members of historically disadvantaged groups knows no bounds. His administration is on the hunt to stamp out anything that promotes diversity, equity, and inclusion. In addition to satisfying his (and Stephen Miller’s) personal hatreds, the war on DEI appeals to unsuccessful white men who think that underrepresented groups got advantages unavailable to them.

Here is the latest intrusion: Trump officials want to stamp out any reference to DEI in college admission essays. Students who have prevailed over adversity should be careful not to mention it, especially if they are Black or immigrants. Colleges are wondering how they will pay for this new federal demand.

This student was warned not to write about her life!

Mo Marie Lauyanne Kouame, 18, dreams of being an aerospace engineer and building spacecraft. This fall, she applied to MIT, Princeton, and Columbia. 

For one college essay, she wrote about being homeless at 8 years old, when she came to the United States from France. 

She recalled watching her parents fight for help from the Department of Transitional Assistance and sleeping in hospital beds at Boston Medical Center when they didn’t know where else to go. That early experience changed her, she said. 

“Homelessness,” she wrote, “taught me resilience.”

Kouame’s essay, which recounts how she learned to thrive as a low-income student of color “surrounded by classmates whose lives felt worlds apart from mine,” is about overcoming adversity. 

That’s a theme the White House has identified as a problem in its campaign against diversity, equity, and inclusion. Over the past year, the federal government has flagged “cues” such as personal essays, along with narratives about “overcoming obstacles” and “diversity statements,” as being potentially unlawful: a stand-in for talking about race.

More than two years have passed since the Supreme Court ended race-conscious affirmative action, and the Trump administration has since demanded colleges submit data proving they don’t consider race in admissions. It has also expanded what it sees as “discriminatory admissions processes” to include considering a student’s sexual orientation, gender identity, ethnicity, nationality, political views, and religious associations.

For Kouame, not writing about her identity felt “impossible,” she said in a Zoom interview, “because the things that I’ve gone through in life make me who I am now.” 

Other students are weighing the pros and cons, said Ethan Sawyer, founder of College Essay Guy, which offers one-on-one coaching and free online resources through the admissions process. He added the key is “to step back and take stock” of what colleges are actually looking for. Essentially: “How will you be a valuable, contributing member of the community?” 

Navigating the college admissions landscape has never been easy, but for the class of 2030 it’s particularly fraught. Plenty of advisers can be hired for a fee: Private consulting is a $3 billion industry, with parents paying tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars to give their kids an edge. Community organizations, college-prep programs, and high schools are also on hand to assist students. 

There’s no question it’s an uneven playing field, though this year there is one equalizer in the college admissions game: No one really knows what’s coming next.

Categories Bias, Equity, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Higher Education, Trump

Federal Judge Rules That Trump Regime Cannot Withhold $1.2 Billion from UCLA

By dianeravitch
November 17, 2025 //
2

Federal Judge Rita F. Lin ruled that the federal government cannot withhold $1.2 billion in funding for medical and scientific research as punishment for alleged anti-Senitism. This is an important victory for free speech, academic freedom, and the First Amendment. The Trump administration’s efforts to impose its views on the nation’s institutions of higher education—and U.S. research funding as leverage is unprecedented in American history.

The Los Angeles Times reported the decision.

A federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump administration from imposing a $1.2-billion fine on UCLA along with stipulations for deep campus changes in exchange for being eligible for federal grants.

The decision is a major win for universities that have struggled to resist President Trump’s attempt to discipline “very bad” universities that he claims have mistreated Jewish students, forcing them to pay exorbitant fines and agree to adhere to conservative standards.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The preliminary injunction, issued by U.S. District Judge Rita F. Lin of the Northern District of California, rendered moot — for now — nearly every aspect of a more than 7,000-word settlement offer the federal government sent to the University of California in August after suspending $584 million in medical, science and energy research grants to the Los Angeles campus.

The government said it froze the funds after finding UCLA broke the law by using race as a factor in admissions, recognizing transgender people’s gender identities, and not taking antisemitism complaints seriously during pro-Palestinian protests in 2024 — claims that UC has denied.

The settlement proposal outlined extensive changes to push UCLA — and by extension all of UC — ideologically rightward by calling for an end to diversity-related scholarships, restrictions on foreign student enrollment, a declaration that transgender people do not exist, an end to gender-affirming healthcare for minors, the imposition of free speech limits and more.

“The administration and its executive agencies are engaged in a concerted campaign to purge ‘woke,’ ‘left,’ and ‘socialist’ viewpoints from our country’s leading universities,” Lin wrote in her opinion. “Agency officials, as well as the president and vice president, have repeatedly and publicly announced a playbook of initiating civil rights investigations of preeminent universities to justify cutting off federal funding, with the goal of bringing universities to their knees and forcing them to change their ideological tune.

Universities are then presented with agreements to restore federal funding under which they must change what they teach, restrict student anonymity in protests, and endorse the administration’s view of gender, among other things. Defendants submit nothing to refute this….”

Universities including Columbia, Brown and Cornell agreed to pay the government hundreds of millions to atone for alleged violations similar to the ones facing UCLA. The University of Pennsylvania and University of Virginia also reached agreements with the Trump administration that were focused, respectively, on ending recognition of transgender people and halting diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

Friday’s decision, for the time being, spares the UC from having to proceed with negotiations that it reluctantly entered with the federal government to avoid further grant cuts and restrictions across the system, which receives $17.5 billion in federal funding each year. UC President James B. Milliken has said that the $1.2-billion fine would “completely devastate” UC and that the system, under fire from the Trump administration, faces “one of the gravest threats in UC’s 157-year history.”

This is not the first time a judge rebuked Trump for his higher education campaign.

Massachusetts-based U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs in September ordered the government to reverse billions in cuts to Harvard. But that case did not wade directly into settlement negotiations.

Those talks have proceeded slowly. In a court hearing last week, a Department of Justice lawyer said “there’s no evidence that any type of deal with the United States is going to be happening in the immediate future.” The lawyer argued that the settlement offer was only an idea that had not received UC approval.
Because of that, he said, a lawsuit was inappropriate. Lin disagreed.

“Plaintiffs’ harm is already very real. With every day that passes, UCLA continues to be denied the chance to win new grants, ratcheting up defendants’ pressure campaign,” she wrote. “And numerous UC faculty and staff have submitted declarations describing how defendants’ actions have already chilled speech throughout the UC system.”

The case was brought by more a dozen faculty and staff unions and associations from across UC’s 10 campuses, who said the federal government was violating their 1st Amendment rights and constitutional right to due process.

UC, which has avoided directly challenging the government in court, was not party to the suit.
“This is not only a historic lawsuit — brought by every labor union and faculty union in the UC — but also an incredible win,” said Veena Dubal, a UC Irvine law professor and general counsel for one of the plaintiffs, the American Assn. of University Professors, which has members across UC campuses.

Dubal called the decision “a turning point in the fight to save free speech and research in the finest public school system in the world.”
Asked about Friday’s outcome, a spokesperson said UC “remains focused on our vital work to drive innovation, advance medical breakthroughs and strengthen the nation’s long-term competitiveness. UC remains committed to protecting the mission, governance, and academic freedom of the university.”

Categories Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Higher Education, Medicine, Research, Science

Three More Universities Reject Trump’s “Compact”

By dianeravitch
October 17, 2025 //
8

It seems that universities have a stronger spine than large law firms or media conglomerates.

Trump offered nine prestigious universities a deal: Adopt the Trumpian rightwing policies and you won’t have any difficulty getting federal funds in the future.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was first to say no. In the past few days, three more universities told Linda McMahon, wrestling entrepreneur, that they would not sign the “Compact.”

Brown University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Southern California said no. No way. Our academic freedom and independence from federal control are not for sale.

Good for them!

Categories Academic Freedom, Higher Education, Trump

MIT’s President Rejects Trump “Compact” to Abandon Academic Freedom

By dianeravitch
October 13, 2025 //
9

The U.S. Department of Education invited 9 eminent universities to join a “compact” in which they would adopt Trump priorities in exchange for assurances of future federal funding. Trump priorities include abolishing any efforts to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion; assuring that rightwing views are accorded equal time; and agreeing that students would be admitted solely by merit (i.e. test scores). This “compact” means intrusion of the federal government into the internal decision-making of the university.

The first institution to respond was the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Its president Dr. Sally Kornbluth, a cell biologist, wrote this letter to Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, a wrestling entrepreneur:

Regarding the Compact

October 10, 2025

Sally Kornbluth, President

Dear members of the MIT community, 

The U.S. Department of Education recently sent MIT and eight other institutions a proposed “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” along with a letter asking that MIT review the document.

From the messages I’ve received, I know this is on the minds of many of you and that you care deeply about the Institute’s mission, its values and each other. I do too. 

After considerable thought and consultation with leaders from across MIT, today I sent the following reply to U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon. 

Sincerely,
Sally Kornbluth

Dear Madam Secretary,

I write in response to your letter of October 1, inviting MIT to review a “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.” I acknowledge the vital importance of these matters.

I appreciated the chance to meet with you earlier this year to discuss the priorities we share for American higher education.

As we discussed, the Institute’s mission of service to the nation directs us to advance knowledge, educate students and bring knowledge to bear on the world’s great challenges. We do that in line with a clear set of values, with excellence above all. Some practical examples:

These values and other MIT practices meet or exceed many standards outlined in the document you sent. We freely choose these values because they’re right, and we live by them because they support our mission – work of immense value to the prosperity, competitiveness, health and security of the United States. And of course, MIT abides by the law.

The document also includes principles with which we disagree, including those that would restrict freedom of expression and our independence as an institution. And fundamentally, the premise of the document is inconsistent with our core belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone.

In our view, America’s leadership in science and innovation depends on independent thinking and open competition for excellence. In that free marketplace of ideas, the people of MIT gladly compete with the very best, without preferences. Therefore, with respect, we cannot support the proposed approach to addressing the issues facing higher education.

As you know, MIT’s record of service to the nation is long and enduring. Eight decades ago, MIT leaders helped invent a scientific partnership between America’s research universities and the U.S. government that has delivered extraordinary benefits for the American people. We continue to believe in the power of this partnership to serve the nation.

Sincerely,
Sally Kornbluth

cc
Ms. May Mailman
Mr. Vincent Haley

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Ethics, Higher Education, Trump, U.S. Department of Education

M.I.T. Rejects Trump “Compact” That Offers Federal Money for Academic Freedom

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2025 //
13

The Trump administration used a threat to try to cow leading universities to abandon their independence. The administration called their offer a “Compact,” but in reality it was an offer of protection money. The old way of the Mafia: “Pay us and we will make sure no one breaks your windows or vandalizes your store.”

Vimal Patel of The New York Times reported:

M.I.T. became the first university to reject an agreement that would trade support for the Trump administration’s higher education agenda in exchange for favorable treatment.

The proposal, called the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” was sent to nine universities and would require colleges to cap international student enrollment, freeze tuition for five years, adhere to definitions of gender and prohibit anything that would “belittle” conservative ideas.

In a letter on Friday to the Trump administration, M.I.T.’s president, Sally Kornbluth, wrote that the university has already freely met or exceeded many of the standards outlined in the proposal, but that she disagrees with other requirements it demands, including those that would restrict free expression.

“Fundamentally, the premise of the document is inconsistent with our core belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone,” Dr. Kornbluth wrote.

A White House spokeswoman, Liz Huston, said in a statement that “any university that refuses this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to transform higher education isn’t serving its students or their parents — they’re bowing to radical, left-wing bureaucrats.”

“The best science can’t thrive in institutions that have abandoned merit, free inquiry, and the pursuit of truth,” she added. “President Trump encourages universities to join us in restoring academic excellence and common sense policies.”

The White House has said it wants responses from the universities by Oct. 20. The other eight colleges are the University of Arizona, Brown University, Dartmouth College, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas, Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia.

The compacts have been deeply unpopular among faculty members, who view them as yet another political intrusion into the affairs of academia. They argue that the Trump administration is threatening the independence of American higher education by cutting hundreds of millions of dollars in research funding to force top universities to adopt its agenda.

Categories Academic Freedom, Corruption, Higher Education, Trump
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