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Dive Brief:
California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday threatened to pull state funding from colleges that signed a proposed compact from the Trump administration seeking to impose sweeping policy changes in return for priority in research funding.
“If any California university signs this radical agreement, they’ll lose billions in state funding,” Newsom said in a statement. “California will not bankroll schools that sell out their students, professors, researchers, and surrender academic freedom.”
First reported by the Wall Street Journal, federal officials offered the compact to the University of Southern California and eight other high-profile research universities this week.
Dive Insight:
Since taking office, President Donald Trump and his administration have waged a legal and financial campaign against colleges in an effort to transform them ideologically. It comes after Trump on the campaign trail described colleges as “dominated by Marxist maniacs and lunatics” and full of academics “obsessed with indoctrinating America’s youth.”
With the compact, the administration has gone from using mainly sticks — typically in the form of civil rights investigations and canceled research grants — to using carrots as a means of pushing institutions to make reforms.
The Trump administration offered to prioritize colleges for research grants and other funding if they agree to give the government unprecedented control over internal institutional decisions and governance.
That includes:
Taking a position of institutional neutrality on events that don’t directly impact the college.
Committing not to consider race, gender, religion and other characteristics “explicitly or implicitly” in admissions. (The compact would grant exceptions for religious and single-sex institutions to limit admissions based on religious belief and gender, respectively.)
Conducting broad, public assessments of the viewpoints of employees and students.
Changing governance structures and potentially dissolving or taking over departments that “purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.”
Adopting policies that recognize “academic freedom is not absolute” and prevent “discriminatory, threatening, harassing, or other behaviors that abridge the rights of other members of the university community.”
Capping international undergraduate enrollment at 15% of the broader student body while screening out “students who demonstrate hostility to the United States, its allies, or its values.”
Freezing tuition for five years.
Requiring applicants to take standardized tests such as the SAT.
Committing to using “lawful force” and “swift, serious, and consistent sanctions” to handle protests that “delay or disrupt class instruction or disrupt libraries or other traditional study locations.”
The compact would also require colleges with endowments worth $2 million or more per student to waive tuition for students studying hard sciences, though the memo didn’t define the field.
Along with USC, eight other colleges received the administration’s memo detailing the compact: the University of Arizona, Brown University, Dartmouth College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Texas, Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia.
The compact has drawn alarm and stern rebukes throughout the higher education world.
“College and university presidents cannot bargain with the essential freedom of colleges and universities to determine, on academic grounds, whom to admit and what is taught, how, and by whom,” the American Association of Colleges and Universities said in a statement Friday.
Denise Forte, president and CEO of the policy analysis and advocacy organization EdTrust, described the compact in a statement as an “existential threat to all institutions of higher learning and the latest example of the federal government overexerting its power to intimidate colleges and universities viewed as ideological enemies.”
In a joint statement Thursday, top leaders of the American Association of University Professors and the American Federation of Teachers described the compact as offering preferential treatment “in exchange for allegiance to a partisan ideological agenda” and said that it “stinks of favoritism, patronage, and bribery.” They urged all governing boards and administrators to reject the agreement.
American Council on Education President Ted Mitchell in an interview with The New York Times described the compact as a power play “designed to divide the higher education community.”
And then there is Newsom, who has been among the most vocal Democrats opposing Trump, especially since the president sent the National Guard into Los Angeles this summer, a move that a judge later ruled illegal.
In a press release, Newsom’s office described the compact as tying access to federal research funding to “radical conservative ideological restrictions on colleges and universities.” The governor also specifically threatened to “instantly” pull colleges’ eligibility for Cal Grants, a form of state aid for students from low- and middle-income families.
USC on Friday confirmed it had received and was reviewing the administration’s letter, but the university did not offer further comment.
Most of those institutions have remained quiet about their plans, if any, to sign or reject the agreement. A leader from one, however, voiced enthusiastic openness to the compact.
In a widely shared statement, Kevin Eltife, chair of the University of Texas Board of Regents, said that the system was “honored” that its flagship in Austin was selected among the nine to receive the compact.
“We enthusiastically look forward to engaging with university officials and reviewing the compact immediately,” said Eltife, a former Republican state senator.
