As lukewarm as it gets
The UA says “no” to Trump’s compact. Kind of.
The University of Arizona is now the seventh school to reject the Trump administration’s compact.
At least we think it is.
The letter that UA President Suresh Garimella sent to Education Secretary Linda McMahon was so watered down with conciliatory language that we’re not 100% sure it was actually a “no.”
Garimella was talking about a deal where Trump officials would give universities preferential access to federal funding if they made policy changes like freezing tuition rates, capping international enrollment, and offering free tuition to STEM students.
They’d also agree to back Trump on virtually every culture war front that touches on education, from dismissing the rights of transgender students to making sure professors don’t “belittle” conservative ideas.
The closest Garimella got to rejecting the deal was when he told McMahon: “We seek no special treatment and believe in our ability to compete for federally funded research strictly on merit.”
Garimella is a little clearer in the note he sent to the campus community on Monday. If you squint a little, you’ll see he wrote: “The university has not agreed to the terms outlined in the draft proposal.”
Even then, the message is couched in language that seems to leave the door open. He noted the UA “received further clarification” that federal officials are “seeking constructive dialogue rather than a definitive written response.”
To be fair, that point has been confusing ever since Trump officials offered the compact on October 1. They said they wanted responses by Monday and signed deals by November 21. It wasn’t clear if schools had to decide by Monday or just give “limited” feedback, as Trump officials described it.
But nowhere in the letter does Garimella offer a “we respectfully decline,” as so many other university presidents did in their letters to Trump officials.
Instead, this is how Garimella wrapped up his letter to McMahon, along with a statement of principles:
“We welcome the opportunity to engage other universities, higher education associations, members of Congress, and your administration to advance and implement our principles in alignment with the national interest,” he wrote.
The day after Garimella sent the letter, Tom Horne, Arizona’s schools superintendent and an ex-officio member of the Arizona Board of Regents, said in a news release he was “pleased” that the UA is “in talks about implementing the agreement,” adding “reports that the U of A has rejected this compact are untrue.”
Strong language
The compact offer put university officials in a tough spot.
They’d watched the Trump administration pull back huge amounts of federal funding from schools on the East Coast, and then essentially extort those schools to get rid of DEI and other policies if they want their funding back.
Then the UA and eight other universities got the compact offer, and they had to figure out what to do.
Officials at the University of Texas at Austin were the only ones who immediately said they’d be “honored” to sign the compact.
The rest of the universities, except for Vanderbilt, rejected the deal, often using much stronger language than Garimella did.
The first school to rebuff the compact offer was MIT. In an October 10 letter, MIT President Sally Kornbluth outlined the principles in the deal “with which we disagree, including those that would restrict freedom of expression and our independence as an institution.”
The “premise of the document is inconsistent with our core belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone,” Kornbluth wrote.
“In our view, America’s leadership in science and innovation depends on independent thinking and open competition for excellence. In that free marketplace of ideas, the people of MIT gladly compete with the very best, without preferences,” Kornbluth wrote. “Therefore, with respect, we cannot support the proposed approach to addressing the issues facing higher education.”
At the University of Southern California, President Beong-Soo Kim said USC “respectfully declines to participate in the proposed Compact,” alongside some pointed criticism of the compact.
Kim said there is some common ground on issues like controlling tuition rates, but “we are concerned that 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.”
Then Kim lowered the boom in the most academically civil way possible.
“Other countries whose governments lack America’s commitment to freedom and democracy have shown how academic excellence can suffer when shifting external priorities tilt the research playing field away from free, meritocratic competition,” Kim wrote.
Over at Brown University, they’d already gone through the wringer with Trump’s team earlier this year. They eventually struck a deal in July to restore federal funding in exchange for Brown making policy changes, including defining “male” and “female” for sports and combating anti-semitism.
Brown University President Christina H. Paxson kept referring back to the July agreement in her October 15 letter to Trump officials.
The July agreement “expressly affirms the government’s lack of authority to dictate our curriculum or the content of academic speech — a principle that is not reflected in the Compact,” Paxson wrote.
“Therefore, while we value our long-held and well-regarded partnership with the federal government, Brown is respectfully declining to join the Compact. We remain committed to the July agreement and its preservation of Brown’s core values in ways that the Compact — in any form — fundamentally would not,” Paxson wrote.
Not over yet
All these rejections aren’t the end of the road for the nine universities.
White House spokeswoman Liz Huston reiterated a threat from the compact last Thursday, the New York Times reported.
“Any higher education institution unwilling to assume accountability and confront these overdue and necessary reforms will find itself without future government and taxpayers support,” Huston said.
Then, after a call with university officials on Friday, Huston said it was a “productive” meeting.
“They now have the baton to consider, discuss, and propose meaningful reforms, including their form and implementation, to ensure college campuses serve as laboratories of American greatness,” Huston said.
So it appears university officials have a lot more carrot-and-stick negotiations to look forward to.
At the University of Virginia, which rejected the compact after the Friday call with Trump officials, the next step in those negotiations might come fairly soon.
The university has been locked in a dispute with Trump officials over DEI policies for months.
UVA officials are close to reaching a deal with the Trump administration that would allow them to avoid paying a financial penalty or submitting to a Trump-appointed monitor, the New York Times reported Tuesday.
In exchange, UVA would adhere to the Trump administration’s interpretation of a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision that bars the consideration of race in admissions. (This is the decision Trump officials use to claim discrimination against white people.)
And Arizona State University recently entered the compact discussion, apparently with some enthusiasm.
ASU officials have been talking to Trump officials for a while about joining the compact, the Wall Street Journal reported, and earlier this week ASU praised Trump’s attitude toward higher education.
“ASU has long been a voice for change in higher education and as President Trump’s team seeks new and innovative approaches to serve the needs of the country, ASU has engaged in dialogue and offered ideas about how to do so,” an ASU spokesperson said in a statement.
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