Dear Friends, One of the many wrongs of this last week has been an attempt by the Trump administration to destroy American higher education: by way of “compacts” in which universities and other institutions would sacrifice their independence and the freedoms of the students, staff and faculty in exchange for essentially nothing — a meaningless assurance though not a binding obligation that the government might perhaps then follow its legal and contractual obligations to fund research.
This amounts to an attempt to make American institutions of higher education resemble those in, for example, Russia: where the government is always present to enforce its daily ideological preferences and the universities and other schools must go along. The result of these “compacts” would be the pointless sacrifice of one area where the United States is still universally recognized as leading the world, which is our universities. These “compacts” would also mean huge economic losses as these institutions cease to operate according to the merit of ideas and following instead the whims of distant bureaucrats bound to a stale ideology.
In this video post I am reading aloud the petition (text below) formulated by the American Federation of Teachers and the American Association of University Professors (my union), which you can read and sign by following the links or the buttons below. I urge you to please do so and to share this post with others who care about economic prosperity, social mobility, and freedom of expression.
Here is where you can sign the petition.
Here is the link to the AFT/AAUP petition.
Here is the text of the AFT/AAUP petition:
“We call on university leaders, faculty, staff and students to unite in rejecting the Trump compact and to defend the principle that no president has the right to buy obedience or sell off freedom.Colleges and universities are places of possibility, where big ideas get tested, diseases are cured, new technologies are invented, and students have an opportunity to learn and develop new skills. They are engines of opportunity, sites of free expression and economic hubs for whole communities, often serving as a major employer and healthcare provider in a region. As such, they are anchors of our democracy.
The Trump administration has put unprecedented and highly politicized regulations on institutions of higher education, pressured them with coercive funding threats, extorted promises to fall in line with a right-wing ideology, and upended long-held principles of civil rights, academic freedom, freedom of speech and equality of opportunity.
The actions are wrong. They are largely illegal, and they are losing in court.
Now the administration is planning to go even further—targeting not only the universities that President Donald Trump personally dislikes but the entire system of federally funded research across the country.
Currently, the federal government funds research based on peer review and scientific merit. Under the proposed Trump compact, it would make awards based on ideological fealty, taking taxpayer money and weaponizing it to undermine research and speech the current administration doesn’t like and punish people it disagrees with.
The Trump compact is not just wrong—it’s unconstitutional. It violates the First Amendment by forcing universities to surrender their right of free speech and academic freedom in exchange for federal funds. The Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected this kind of coercion under the “unconstitutional conditions” doctrine, which says the government cannot use its spending power to force a person to give up a constitutional right—e.g., by dictating ideology or controlling thought.
Under the Trump compact, a successful childhood cancer research project could be cut off because the university allows trans athletes to play on a team. A lab focused on ensuring a clean water supply could be shut down because the university’s mission includes promoting diversity in the student body. A nursing school could lose critical funding because professors are teaching about women’s history.
This policy is a clumsy attempt at thought-policing that will have repercussions for all of society. It risks America’s world leadership in science, technology, innovation and healthcare, creating opportunities for our competitors and our enemies to take the lead. It sets us backward toward an era of less innovation, fewer cures for diseases and a shrinking economy.”
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