The Trump administration’s latest higher education initiative was pitched to America’s elite colleges and universities as a defense of free speech and intellectual rigor. In practice, it reads like a loyalty oath.
The document, a “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” was sent to nine schools earlier this month and outlines 10 conditions the schools must meet to remain eligible for federal funding. The compact requires universities to “abolish” or “transform” departments that “purposely belittle conservative ideas,” define gender strictly “according to reproductive function and biological processes,” and roll back DEI efforts in admissions and faculty hiring. It also caps international student enrollment at 15% and bars more than 5% from any one country, demands that campuses use “lawful force if necessary” to prevent student protest, and restricts all university employees from speaking publicly on “societal and political events” other than when they directly impact the university.
In President Donald Trump’s online posts about the compact on his preferred social platform, Truth Social, he claimed the agreement is about lowering costs for students, protecting conservative free speech on campus, and focusing on “merit” over DEI. But college presidents, student organizers, and faculty are sounding the alarm about how the Trump administration could use the threat of funding cuts to reshape the university as an institution in its own image. University administrators have until October 20 to provide feedback to the White House, and until November 21 to decide whether or not to sign.
Cross-campus organizing is a consistent factor in the response to the Trump administration’s attacks. On Tuesday evening, a representative for the youth climate organizing-focused Sunrise Movement, which is supporting students at the nine campuses and elsewhere, told Teen Vogue that they’re preparing to launch “a new national coalition uniting student and youth organizations to push schools to not comply with Trump's demands.”
This week, student body presidents from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the University of Virginia, and the University of Arizona, joined by student governance bodies in part or in full from Brown University, Dartmouth College, the University of Pennsylvania, and Vanderbilt, issued a joint statement urging their schools to reject the agreement outright. The signatories wrote that the compact “could systemically alter the mission of higher education and erode the independence that has long defined our universities.”
Last week, MIT’s president Sally Kornbluth was the first administrator of the nine schools to openly oppose the plan, noting on Friday that the compact agreement “would restrict freedom of expression and [MIT’s] independence as an institution.” Dartmouth president Sian Leah Beilock similarly rejected the proposal, writing that the college “will never compromise our academic freedom and our ability to govern ourselves.”
Strong opposition continues to come from student and faculty organizing, as those at some of the most elite colleges in the country beg their universities not to cave to Trump for a check. Their coordinated response reflects a new phase of student and faculty labor activism that has been underway for years, from undergraduate and graduate worker union drives to encampments demanding universities divest from Israel. Now, those same organizing networks are being deployed to defend the autonomy of the university.
At Brown University last Thursday, more than 100 students and 20 faculty members gathered outside the campus gates, taping their mouths shut to symbolize what they called the compact’s threat to free speech.
“As the child of an immigrant, I have seen firsthand how systems use fear and policies to keep people silent and subservient,” says Francisco Ramirez, a sophomore and Brown Rise Up organizer. “This proposed compact is no different.”
Faculty opposition continues to mount. At the University of Virginia, 97% of the faculty who attended a special meeting voted to reject the compact outright. But the final decision lies with university presidents and the trustees and boards that oversee them, some of whom have been eager to align with the Trump administration. Kevin Eltife, chair of the University of Texas System’s board of regents, said in a statement earlier this month he was “honored” that UT Austin had been selected for “potential funding advantages” under the plan.
Following MIT’s rejection of the plan last week, Trump took to Truth Social to air his grievances: “Higher Education has lost its way, and is now corrupting our Youth and Society with WOKE, SOCIALIST, and ANTI-AMERICAN Ideology,” Trump posted on Sunday.
The compact, he claimed, would “end racist admission policies,” and he would “forcefully enforce federal law” against universities that refuse to comply, though it's unclear exactly how he would do that.
For many faculty members and students, the real purpose of the compact and Trump’s threats is to intimidate those in higher education, testing just how far they can go. “For a government to ask a university to give up its control over what can be said or taught, over who can be admitted and over how we evaluate students in exchange for undetermined resources and protection from further targeting,” said J Timmons Roberts, a Brown professor of environment and society. “That is extortion.”
