\n<\/p>\n
Multiple universities have rejected President Trump\u2019s proposed Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education, but they have taken different approaches to turning down the commander in chief. Some have declined pointedly, while others struck a more delicate balancing act. <\/p>\n
To be sure, leaders of the institutions invited to sign the compact have found themselves squeezed by both internal and external forces, under pressure from the federal government to approve the deal and from faculty and other campus constituents to reject it. Both public and private universities have also faced political pressure from state lawmakers, who in some cases urged them to sign and in others have threatened to strip funding if they do. <\/p>\n
Most of the nine universities originally invited to join the compact rejected it on or before the Oct.\u00a020 deadline to provide feedback\u2014well ahead of Nov.\u00a021, the final date for making a decision. Their responses, released to the public, ranged from pointed to demure; in some cases, institutional leaders emphasized their core values in rebutting the proposal, which promised to grant preferential treatment in exchange for freezing tuition, capping international enrollment and suppressing criticism of conservatives, among other demands from the U.S. Department of Education.<\/p>\n
Here are links to each institution\u2019s response, in the order in which they were posted publicly:<\/p>\n
Together these statements offer insights into how institutions are responding to an unprecedented demand from the federal government: that they subscribe to President Trump\u2019s culturally conservative vision of higher education in exchange for financial gain.<\/p>\n
Experts note that while most institutions declined the deal, some statements stood out more than others.<\/p>\n
Brian Rosenberg, president emeritus of Macalester College, highlighted the Massachusetts Institute of Technology\u2019s statement as the clearest rejection. Unlike some of the other responses, it doesn\u2019t promise future engagement on the federal government\u2019s concerns and is a clear, resounding no based on MIT\u2019s principles, he said.<\/p>\n
The first to reject the compact, MIT president Sally Kornbluth highlighted areas of agreement, such as an emphasis on merit in hiring, admissions and more, but she also argued that the proposal was \u201cinconsistent with our core belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lisa Corrigan, a communications professor at the University of Arkansas and an expert on rhetoric and political communication, flagged the University of Southern California\u2019s statement as a notable response. She pointed out that while USC highlighted its commitment to promoting civil discourse, as many others did, it also emphasized its \u201ccommitment to ROTC and veterans.\u201d (Brown and Arizona were the only other institutions to mention veterans in their responses.)<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought USC really did a strong job in articulating exactly what values they are using to guide their decision-making in rejecting the compact,\u201d Corrigan told Inside Higher Ed<\/em>.<\/p>\n Erin Hennessy, vice president at TVP Communications, flagged both the Dartmouth and Penn statements as notable for different reasons. With Dartmouth, Hennessy said she was struck by the brevity of the statement, which clocked in at about 230 words. And for Penn, she pointed out that it was the only university that did not share the rejection letter it sent to Education Secretary Linda McMahon along with its public statement. Every other institution that rejected the deal posted both a statement and the letter. <\/p>\n (Asked for a copy of its response to the Department of Education, Penn declined to provide it.)<\/p>\n Experts noted a number of other observations from the collective letters and accompanying statements\u2014including how many presidents emphasized merit, which is mentioned in every response except Dartmouth\u2019s. Altogether the word \u201cmerit\u201d appears 15 times in the nine published university responses, and \u201cmeritocracy\u201d is cited once.<\/p>\n Hennessy posited that the focus on that specific word is an attempt to \u201cpush back on the perception of certain folks in the MAGA sphere that believe any program, or any consideration of race or class or ethnic background, is diametrically in conflict with the concept of merit.\u201d <\/p>\n Rosenberg suggested that universities are trying to turn the government\u2019s argument against it. By emphasizing merit, universities are seizing on a \u201clogical inconsistency in the position of the federal government,\u201d he said. While the Trump administration is demanding merit in admissions, hiring and other areas, it also has signaled a willingness to provide preferential treatment on federal research funding based not on merit but a willingness to conform to political priorities.<\/p>\n Many of the responses also mentioned institutional neutrality policies. <\/p>\n USC, Virginia, Vanderbilt and WashU all cited the concept, though only USC and Virginia submitted clear rejections; WashU sent a mixed message, and Vanderbilt has committed only to offering feedback on the proposal. Dartmouth, which also has an institutional neutrality policy, did not mention it. <\/p>\n Both Arizona and Virginia used a similar turn of phrase to reject the compact\u2019s promise of preferential status in exchange for signing, with officials writing, \u201cWe seek no special treatment\u201d in connection to advancing their missions.<\/p>\n One word, however, is notably absent among all the responses: Trump. And only Dartmouth referenced political affiliation in its response to the federal government. President Sian Beilock wrote that she did not believe \u201cthe involvement of the government through a compact\u2014whether it is a Republican- or Democratic-led White House\u2014is the right way to focus America\u2019s leading colleges and universities on their teaching and research mission.\u201d <\/p>\n Though Washington University in St. Louis agreed to provide feedback to the federal government, administrators also appeared to tacitly reject the compact proposal. The university\u2019s initial statement on Monday noted concerns about the compact but stopped short of an outright rejection; Chancellor Andrew Martin wrote that providing feedback does not mean \u201cwe have endorsed or signed on\u201d to the proposal.<\/p>\n But in a Tuesday email to faculty members, Martin wrote he \u201ccan confirm that we won\u2019t sign the proposed Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education\u00a0\u2026 or any document that undermines our mission or our core values.\u201d Martin added WashU will provide feedback, emphasizing the importance of \u201chaving our voice at the table for these potentially consequential conversations.\u201d<\/p>\n WashU, however, has been reluctant to publicly call that a rejection.<\/p>\n Asked by Inside Higher Ed<\/em> about the authenticity of the email, first published by another news outlet, and whether it amounts to a rejection, a university spokesperson only confirmed it was official.<\/p>\n Corrigan suggested that both WashU and Vanderbilt are trying to buy time \u201cto see which universities are going to be in the next round, if any.\u201d She added, \u201cThey want the opportunity to return to the conversation when there\u2019s more political cover for them to potentially say no.\u201d<\/p>\n While most universities invited to join the compact responded publicly by the deadline, both the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Kansas have remained silent on the matter.<\/p>\n Neither has issued publicly shared feedback or other statements about the compact, though University of Texas system board leadership initially responded positively to the invitation to join.<\/p>\n \u201cFor institutions that haven\u2019t responded publicly yet, the questions I would be asking are, is there division between the president and the board on how to move forward on this? Is there division between the president and the faculty on how to move forward on this?\u201d Hennessy said.<\/p>\n To her, that silence signals that internal negotiations are likely at play, potentially involving debates over strategy, language and other points. She believes nonresponders are more likely to sign the compact and may be \u201ctrying to figure out how to make a yes more palatable\u201d to critics.<\/p>\n Rosenberg suggests there are likely legal concerns being discussed.<\/p>\n \u201cLike virtually everything else coming out of the government right now, it\u2019s going to face a legal challenge once someone signs, because the limitations on free speech for members of the community are pretty severe,\u201d he said. \u201cOnce someone signs, it\u2019s going to end up in the courts.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Multiple universities have rejected President Trump\u2019s proposed Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education, but they have taken different approaches to turning down the commander in chief. Some have declined pointedly, while others struck a more delicate balancing act. To be sure, leaders of the institutions invited to sign the compact have found themselves squeezed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30489,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[10497,5651,1067,10699],"class_list":{"0":"post-30488","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-compact","9":"tag-lines","10":"tag-reading","11":"tag-responses"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}WashU\u2019s Muddled Messaging <\/h2>\n
Institutional Silence<\/h2>\n