Oct. 16 (UPI) — Brown University has rejected a Department of Education proposal offering priority access to federal funds in exchange for agreeing to terms that critics say target left-leaning ideology in higher education.
On Oct. 1, the Trump administration sent nine universities a 10-part “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” that reportedly demands reforms to hiring practices and student grading and a pledge to prohibit transgender women from using women’s changing rooms.
It also requires the creation of a “vibrant marketplace of ideas,” among other changes, including a tuition freeze for five years.
Brown University President Christina Paxson rejected the offer in a letter addressed to Education Secretary Linda McMahon, writing she was “concerned that the Compact by its nature and by various provisions would restrict academic freedom and undermine the autonomy of Brown’s governance, critically compromising our ability to fulfill our mission.”
Since returning to the White House in January, President Donald Trump has targeted dozens of universities, particularly so-called elite institutions, with executive orders, lawsuits, reallocation of resources and threats over a range of allegations, from anti-Semitism to having diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
Critics have accused Trump of trying to coerce schools under threat of stringent punishments — from losing their accreditation to paying hefty fines sometimes in excess of $1 billion — to adopt his far-right policies.
In late July, Brown reached a $50 million settlement with the federal government over 10 years to unfreeze federal funding and to resolve federal allegations of violating anti-discrimination laws.
As part of the agreement, which also unfroze federal funds, Brown agreed to adhere to government requirements concerning male and female athletics, codify its commitment to ensuring a “thriving Jewish community” and maintain nondiscrimination compliance, among others.
In her letter Wednesday, Paxson said the July agreement includes several of the principles included in the compact while also affirming “the governments lack of authority to dictate our curriculum or the content of academic speech.”
“While we value our long-held and well-regarded partnership with the federal government, Brown is respectfully declining to join the Compact,” she said. “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.”
Brown’s rejection comes days after MIT similarly declined to join the compact.
“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,” MIT President Sally Kornbluth wrote in a letter to the Department of Education on Friday.
“Therefore, with respect, we cannot support the proposed approach to addressing the issues facing higher education.”
Conservatives and the Trump administration have alleged that university are founts of left-wing indoctrination that exclude right-leaning thought. However, critics have described the Trump administration’s attempt to address these concerns as government overreach and a violation of free speech rights.
“The White House’s new Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education raises red flags,” the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression said in a statement earlier this month.
“As Fire has long argued, campus reform is necessary. But overreaching government coercion that tries to end-run around the First Amendment to impose an official orthodoxy is unacceptable.”
“A government that can reward colleges and universities for speech it favors today can punish them for speech it dislikes tomorrow,” FIRE continued. “That’s not reform. That’s government-funded orthodoxy.”
Meanwhile, Trump over the weekend suggested that more universities would be invited to join the compact, saying in an online statement that “those Institutions that want to quickly return to the Pursuit of Truth and Achievement, they are invited to enter into the forward looking Agreement with the Federal Government to help bring about the Golden Age of Academic Excellence in Higher Education.”
In the statement, he railed against universities, saying “much of Higher Education has lost its way, and is now corrupting our Youth and Society with WOKE, SOCIALIST and ANTI_AMERICAN Ideology that serves as justification for discriminatory practices by Universities that are Unconstitutional and Unlawful”