President of the College Maud S. Mandel outlined a set of principles upon which she believes “any compact committed to excellence in higher education should be based” in an all-campus email on Oct. 6.
The email follows a memo from the Trump administration to nine schools — not including Williams — which asks the institutions to commit to a set of wide-ranging terms in exchange for favorable access to federal funds. The memo, titled “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” requires that signatories ban the use of race or sex in hiring and admissions, freeze tuition rates for five years, cap international undergraduate enrollment at 15 percent, and eliminate departments that “belittle … conservative ideas.”
In her all-campus email, Mandel wrote that, while the College did not receive the memo, she believes its existence implies a threat to academic freedom nationwide.
“By asking schools to commit to an ideological program, the Compact threatens to undermine academic independence, which has been essential to the flourishing of ideas and innovation in the United States,” she wrote.
In response, Mandel outlined five principles she believes should have guided a “more constructive” compact. Those are “freedom of inquiry,” “open-mindedness,” “institutional autonomy,” “self-critique and reform,” and “accountability and due process.”
The demand to sign the compact may be extended beyond the initial nine recipients to all colleges and universities, May Mailman, senior advisor for special projects at the White House, told The New York Times. Mandel’s email did not state how the College would respond if it were asked to sign the compact.
The Trump administration’s memo notes that “institutions of higher education are free to develop models and values other than those” outlined in the document, but doing so would mean forgoing federal benefits.
In a letter to the nine university presidents, Education Secretary Linda McMahon and two White House officials said the goal of the memo was to help the next generation “grow into resilient, curious, and moral leaders, inspired by American and Western values.”
The White House selected the recipient schools because it believed they are, or have the potential to be, “good actors,” Mailman told The Wall Street Journal. Mailman has been at the forefront of the Trump administration’s aggressive efforts to reshape higher education.
The University of Arizona, Brown, Dartmouth, MIT, the University of Pennsylvania, University of Southern California (USC), the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin), Vanderbilt, and the University of Virginia all received the memo.
As of the evening of Oct. 7, only three of the nine schools — Dartmouth, UT Austin, USC — have publicly responded.
UT System Chairman Kevin Eltife said in an email statement on Thursday that the system will immediately review the document. “The University of Texas System is honored that our flagship — The University of Texas at Austin — has been named as one of only nine institutions in the U.S. selected by the Trump administration for potential funding advantages under its new ‘Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,’” Eltife wrote.
“Today, we welcome the new opportunity presented to us, and we look forward to working with the Trump administration on it,” he continued.
Interim President of USC Beong-Soo Kim wrote in a community-wide message on Friday that he will consult the Board of Trustees, deans, the Academic Senate, the newly-formed Faculty Advisory Committee, and other stakeholder groups in response to the memo.
“These conversations can take time, but they are essential to building trust and community,” he wrote. “In this moment, and in all others, the Board’s and my responsibility is to advance USC’s mission and uphold our core values, and we are committed to doing just that.”
Governor of California Gavin Newsom issued a statement on Thursday warning that any California university that signed the “radical agreement” would lose billions in state funding. “CALIFORNIA WILL NOT BANKROLL SCHOOLS THAT SELL OUT THEIR STUDENTS, PROFESSORS, RESEARCHERS, AND SURRENDER ACADEMIC FREEDOM,” he wrote.
At a bill signing event at UC Berkeley on Friday, Newsom again urged universities to “do the right thing.”
“What’s the point of the system? What’s the point of the university? What’s the point of all of this if we don’t have academic freedom?” he said. “It’s not a choice, and the fact that I felt I needed to even send that message is rather shocking, because some people think it is.”
Although the University of Arizona and University of Pennsylvania are among those yet to comment on the memo, faculty at both institutions have condemned it, arguing that the proposal is an unprecedented federal encroachment into higher education.
Professor Leila Hudson, chair of the faculty committee at the University of Arizona, wrote to President of the University Suresh Garimella that the school’s “institutional mission transcends all partisan politics and the dirty compromises that partisan politics demands.” She continued, “Our mission does not work without a bedrock commitment on the part of our leadership to everyone’s freedoms — constitutional, academic and otherwise.”
University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School and Wharton School professor Amanda Shanor dubbed the prowposal “blatantly unconstitutional” in a statement to The Daily Pennsylvanian.
“If what I have is correct, the compact explicitly requires universities to transform or abolish institutional units so as to protect a set of viewpoints the compact nebulously calls ‘conservative ideas’ and to commit to a governmental ‘assessment’ of the viewpoints of faculty, students, and staff and every field, department, school, and teaching unit,” Shanor wrote. “That is the definition of an unconstitutional condition.”
To monitor their adherence to the memo’s principles, signatory schools are expected to hire an independent auditor to conduct polling among the schools’ community to evaluate the institution’s performance. The Justice Department would then review the data.
The letter accompanying the compact asks for written comments from the nine universities no later than Oct. 20, CBS News reported. “We are aiming to have a signed agreement by no later than November 21, 2025,” the letter continues, according to CBS.
