A Compact for Control (opinion)

"For more than 80 years, the system of higher education in the United States has partnered with the federal government to produce the best science, technology and scholarship in the world. Competing for federal research support on the basis of merit, universities have produced countless innovations and spurred enormous economic growth. The Trump administration has now proposed a " Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education " that threatens to destroy this partnership."

"Holding hostage federal loans and grants, the "compact" is essentially a unilateral executive decree that cannot be refused. Although it sounds in high and unobjectionable ideals, it is in fact designed to undermine the traditional academic independence and freedom that have sustained the greatness of American universities. The compact should be immediately and forcefully rejected by all self-respecting institutions of higher education."

"They serve to increase our knowledge of the world and to educate our young. Knowledge cannot be increased if it is assessed by political criteria, as distinguished from standards of intellectual merit. But the compact requires that institutions of higher education abolish "institutional units that ... belittle ... conservative ideas." What exactly counts as conservative is unstated and left in the control of the administration."

For more than eighty years the United States higher education system has partnered with the federal government to produce leading science, technology and scholarship and to compete for federal research support on the basis of merit. A proposed federal "Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education" conditions federal loans and grants on compliance, effectively imposing political criteria over intellectual merit. The compact demands abolishing units that 'belittle conservative ideas,' requires empirical proof of a 'broad spectrum of viewpoints,' and places determinations of acceptable inquiry in political hands. The compact threatens academic independence, free speech, scientific consensus, and the foundational missions of universities.

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