It is called the Compact for Academic Excellence. It sounds benign, even aspirational, until you read the fine print. The Trump administration’s new compact is not about excellence; it is about control. It is an attempt to turn higher education into a political instrument, one signature at a time.
In early October, the White House sent letters to nine leading research universities (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brown University, Dartmouth College, University of Pennsylvania, University of Southern California, University of Texas at Austin, University of Virginia, Vanderbilt University, and University of Arizona) offering “preferential access” to federal grants if these universities agreed to a list of new conditions. Those conditions included banning consideration of race and gender in admissions, capping international students, freezing tuition, and even abolishing programs deemed to “belittle” conservative ideas. The deal would also force universities to certify compliance annually and allow the federal government to revoke all funds if it found “violations.”
With the initial feedback deadline for the nine schools approaching on Oct. 20, many are awaiting to see what the institutions have to say. MIT was the first to publicly reject the compact. Its president called the offer “inconsistent with scientific freedom and independence,” making clear that the compact’s real goal was coercion, not reform.
This Is About More Than One Compact
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin in programs that receive federal financial assistance, while Title VII governs employment and hiring practices. Under Title VII (29 CFR Part 1608), voluntary affirmative action plans are explicitly permitted in hiring, though recent court rulings—like Loper Bright—have reduced deference to agency interpretations of those rules. Together, these provisions outline the legal foundation that conservatives now invoke to challenge diversity, equity, and inclusion policies in both admissions and hiring.
However, this compact is only the newest piece of a much larger pattern. Over the past year, the Trump administration has repeatedly threatened or frozen university funding over campus protests, diversity programs, and free speech disputes. The message is always the same: fall in line or lose federal support.
The tactic has evolved from punishment to preemption: dictating in advance what universities can teach, who they can admit, and how they should speak about politics. It is a direct attack on academic freedom disguised as bureaucratic reform.
Worse, it sets a precedent that could be expanded to every campus in America. Once federal funding becomes contingent on ideological compliance, it will not just stop at elite private schools: it will reach public universities, community colleges, and any institution that takes federal research dollars.
There is an argument that may be made from a conservative perspective – one that claims that taxpayer dollars are not entitlements and that their ideals should be voiced on campus too.
Despite this, it is clear that taxpayer dollars should not be conditionally held hostage along the lines of conservatives’ ideological viewpoints. It is blatantly unconstitutional and authoritarian and puts universities in an impossible situation with their funding already being cut.
What is Really at Stake
If this compact spreads, the effects will hit not just students first, but also anyone employed by these universities. By banning consideration of race, gender, or identity in admissions, the compact would erase decades of progress on campus diversity. Capping international student admissions would immediately weaken the global exchange of ideas that defines modern academia — diminishing the unique global perspectives and cross-cultural dialogue that international students bring to classrooms, research, and campus life. Their absence would not only impoverish intellectual discourse today but also set a dangerous precedent for restricting academic exchange in the future.
By labeling any program that is deemed to “belittle” conservative ideas as noncompliant, it would encourage censorship in classrooms, forcing faculty to avoid controversy rather than risk losing funding. What “belittling” is can be very subjective and sets a poor precedent that paves the way for further encroachment on free expression. The aim should not be to protect just conservative ideas, but to uphold the protections on our rights of speech as a whole.
The First Amendment states that “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech.” This may seem a simple piece of knowledge, but by creating guidelines to be followed to align only with conservative ideals, this becomes an overtly unconstitutional piece of policy in the making.
The result is not “balance.” It is fear — a chilling effect that seeps into every syllabus, hiring decision, and research proposal. The administration claims it is fighting “ideological bias.” In reality, it is institutionalizing one.
And, there is the legal danger as well. Analysts warn that the compact could expose university presidents and admissions officers to lawsuits or federal penalties if accused of violating vague clauses about “non-discrimination.” It is an impossible bind: sign and risk lawsuits, or refuse and risk defunding.
A Broader Pattern of Centralized Control
The Compact is not an isolated policy but a troubling escalation in a clear pattern of executive overreach aimed at silencing dissent and imposing ideological conformity across civil society. Over the past year, the administration has repeatedly deployed the vast power of the federal government to pressure and penalize institutions that do not align with its agenda. This behavior has manifested in several explicit actions against universities:
- Weaponizing Federal Funding: Prior to the Compact, the administration froze billions of dollars in federal research and student loan funding from top universities like Harvard, Cornell, and Columbia, often citing vague compliance issues or alleged failures to combat antisemitism on campus. In one case, a federal judge found that the government’s attempt to strip funds from Harvard violated the university’s First Amendment rights and was a “targeted, ideologically-motivated assault.”
- Targeting Non-Citizen Speech: The administration has used immigration enforcement to intimidate, detain, and revoke visas for hundreds of students and scholars based on their political speech, particularly those involved in pro-Palestinian advocacy, effectively creating a “Palestine exception” to free speech rights on campus. By allowing the rights of expression held by international students and faculty to be continually infringed upon, it once again sets a poor precedent for students with citizen status to be censored as well, which it already has.
- Politicizing Civil Service: Beyond higher education, the administration has taken steps to eliminate or neutralize independent government agencies, issued executive orders to dismantle the Department of Education, and pursued investigations against critics and opponents, demonstrating a clear focus on consolidating power and undermining checks and balances. These shifts within the Department of Education are not exceptionally standout for a president’s administration, but alongside the background of encroachment upon the education system and rights to freedom as a whole, it becomes one more vivid step of this slippery slope.
The Compact for Academic Excellence represents the latest and most comprehensive step in this authoritarian trend. Rather than merely punishing past non-compliance, it attempts to preemptively purchase future obedience, institutionalizing the use of federal money as a loyalty test for the academic community.
What Universities, Including Drexel, Must Do
Drexel may not be one of the nine universities targeted, but we are not immune. Once a precedent like this exists, it is only a matter of time before it reaches every institution that depends on federal support, which means almost all of us.
Universities should form coalitions – legal, academic, and moral – to challenge this compact’s legitimacy. And students should demand that our schools speak out, because silence is complicity. The longer we wait to resist, the easier it becomes for power to normalize control through money.
The Bottom Line
This compact is not an isolated policy. It is part of a slow, deliberate campaign to make political obedience the cost of higher education. We cannot treat it as another culture war story or a far-off problem for Ivy Leagues. It is a test balloon: one that, if unchallenged, will rise higher and cast a shadow over every campus in the country.
If we care about truth, research, and the right to learn freely, we should not sign that compact. Not now, not ever.