Research & Developments is a blog for brief updates that provide context for the flurry of news regarding law and policy changes that impact science and scientists today.
The “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” developed by the Trump administration and sent to nine universities on 1 October, proposes that the institutions agree to a series of criteria in exchange for preferential treatment in funding decisions.
The compact’s provisions ask universities to:
- Ban the consideration of any demographic factors, including sex, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, and religion in any admissions decisions, financial aid decisions, or hiring decisions.
- Commit to “institutional neutrality,” create an “intellectually open campus environment,” and abolish “institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.”
- Require all employees to abstain from actions or speech related to social and political events unless such events have a direct impact on their university or they are acting in their individual capacity rather than as university representatives.
- Interpret the words “woman,” and “man” according to “reproductive function and biological processes.”
- Stop charging tuition for any admitted student pursuing “hard science” programs. (This only applies for universities with endowments over $2 million per undergraduate student.)
- Disclose foreign funding and gifts.
The proposed deal was sent to the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Virginia, the University of Arizona, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Southern California, Vanderbilt University, Dartmouth University, Brown University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“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,” Liz Huston, a White House spokesperson, told Bloomberg.
Simon Marginson, a professor of higher education at Oxford University, told Time that if successful, the compact would “establish a level of federal control of the national mind that has never been seen before.”
On 12 October, President Trump opened up the offer to all institutions of higher education in a post on social media website Truth Social.
As of 17 October, the following schools have responded to Trump’s offer:
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology: MIT was the first to reject Trump’s offer. In a 10 October letter to the administration, MIT President Sally Kornbluth wrote that MIT’s practices “meet or exceed many standards outlined in the document,” but that the compact “also includes principles with which we disagree, including those that would restrict freedom of expression and our independence as an institution.”
- Brown University: In a 15 October letter to the administration, Brown University President Christina H. Paxson declined the deal. She wrote that Brown “would work with the government to find solutions if there were concerns about the way the University fulfills its academic mission,” but that, like Kornbluth, she was “concerned that the Compact by its nature and by various provisions would restrict academic freedom and undermine the autonomy of Brown’s governance.”
- University of Southern California: In a 16 October statement, USC Interim President Beong-Soo Kim informed the university community that he had declined the deal, and wrote that the university takes legal obligations seriously and is diligently working to streamline administrative functions, control tuition rates, maintain academic rigor, and ensure that students develop critical thinking skills. “Even though the Compact would be voluntary, tying research benefits to it would, over time, undermine the same values of free inquiry and academic excellence that the Compact seeks to promote,” he wrote.
- University of Pennsylvania: In a 16 October statement, UPenn President J. Larry Jameson informed the university community that he had declined to sign the compact. “At Penn, we are committed to merit-based achievement and accountability. The long-standing partnership between American higher education and the federal government has greatly benefited society and our nation. Shared goals and investment in talent and ideas will turn possibility into progress,” he wrote.
—Grace van Deelen (@gvd.bsky.social), Staff Writer
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