The letter was addressed to senior White House staff and US Education Secretary Linda E. McMahon. In it, Paxson wrote that Brown signed a voluntary agreement in July with the federal government that advances a number of the high-level principles outlined in the compact, while maintaining core tenets of academic freedom and self-governance.
Despite Brown’s alignment with some goals of the compact, Paxson said provisions that restrict academic freedom, undermine the autonomy of Brown’s governance and tie research funding to criteria would impede Brown’s ability to fulfill its mission.
“While we value our long-held and well-regarded partnership with the federal government, Brown is respectfully declining to join the Compact,” Paxson wrote. “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.”
A White House spokesperson could not be immediately reached for comment Wednesday.
Also on Wednesday, student leaders at Brown University, MIT, Dartmouth University, and four other top-tier colleges are putting pressure on their administrators to not sign a “compact” with the Trump administration, which initially asked select universities to pledge to uphold the president’s political priorities in order to receive priority for federal funding.
“Our administrations have been presented with a false choice between their commitments to knowledge and education and our access to the resources that sustain them,” said a joint statement from student government presidents and executive boards of seven universities, which was shared with the Globe on Wednesday. “To preserve our status as world leaders in education, we must remain true to the foundation of academic freedom that has propelled us forward.”
The statement called for university administrators to “stand in united opposition” and reject the compact’s “political interference and federal overreach.”
“Academic freedom is not negotiable,” said the statement.
Aside from the three New England-based schools, the statement was signed by unidentified student government representatives from the University of Virginia, the University of Arizona, University of Pennsylvania, and Vanderbilt University.
The 10-point document, titled the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” designed in part by Apollo Global Management Inc. cofounder Marc Rowan and shared with nine select universities earlier this month, would require the colleges to cap enrollment of international students, freeze tuition rates charged to US students for the next five years, limit university employees’ actions and speech related to societal and political events, and commit to Trump’s definitions of gender, among other things.
“Institutions of higher education are free to develop models and values other than those below, if the institution elects to forego federal benefits,” the compact read.
Student groups from the University of Southern California and the University of Texas did not sign onto the statement urging universities to reject the compact.
Representatives from the USC Undergraduate Student Government organization and from the University of Texas at Austin Student Government could not be immediately reached for comment.
“As the Compact itself acknowledges, ‘American higher education is the envy of the world and represents a key strategic benefit for our Nation,’ yet the document undermines the very principles that make this statement true,” the student statement read.
On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that the Trump administration is now inviting all US colleges to participate in the compact, which has already been rejected by MIT. The move expands the president’s latest pressure campaign beyond a relatively small circle of the country’s elite universities that have been his targets.
The MIT Grad Student Union held a press conference on Oct. 10, along with other student organizations about the compact sent by the Trump administration last month.David L Ryan/ Globe Staff
MIT president Sally Kornbluth called the compact “inconsistent with our core belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone.”
Apollo CEO and co-founder Rowan wrote in a New York Times essay on Oct. 10 that the compact is not yet final, and remains subject to further discussion, including from campus leaders.
“Over the past year, I have spoken with countless university presidents, directors and advisers; scholars and academics; and lawmakers, policy experts and activists,” wrote Rowan. “The one thing they all agree on is that our university system, which was once one of the nation’s greatest strategic assets, has lost its way.”
While interest in the compact from universities appears to be muted, faculty members at both Dartmouth and Brown have been publicly pressuring their leadership to reject the compact.
Last week, more than 500 Dartmouth faculty members signed a petition urging the college to reject the compact, calling it an “unprecedented attack on higher education.” Brown professor Paja Faudree, who attended a small protest of faculty and students last week, called the compact “extortion, plain and simple.”
In addition to demands about tuition and admissions, the compact would limit university employees’ actions and speech related to societal and political events, commit the schools to Trump’s definitions of gender, and create requirements against political demonstrations that disrupt study locations or harass individual students or groups. The compact would also require schools to abolish “institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.”
The nine schools have until Oct. 20 to submit comments about the compact to the Trump administration, and until Nov. 21 to sign or reject the compact.
Alexa Gagosz can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @alexagagosz and on Instagram @AlexaGagosz.
