“It’s extortion, plain and simple,” said Paja Faudree, an anthropology and linguistics professor at Brown. “There will be no end to the demands he makes of our university, and of other universities. This compact violates all of our values as a community.”
The 10-point document was sent to Brown, the University of Texas, MIT, Dartmouth, the University of Arizona, Vanderbilt University, the University of Virginia, the University of Southern California, and the University of Pennsylvania. The schools have until Nov. 21 to to sign or reject it.
Though other universities said last week that their officials are reviewing the Trump administration’s proposal, Brown has yet to comment publicly on whether it will reject or sign the compact. Brown President Christina H. Paxson said this week during a faculty meeting that she plans to hear from members of the Brown community.
If Brown were to sign, said Denise Davis, a gender and sexuality studies professor at Brown, “We’d become an instrument of the state.”
A protest Thursday was organized by Brown Rise Up, a group of faculty and students working to “resist authoritarianism in higher education,” according to sophomore Francisco Ramirez, one of the organizers.
“As the child of an immigrant, I have seen firsthand how systems use fear and policies to keep people silent and subservient,” said Ramirez. “This proposed compact is no different.”
Alex Shieh, a former student at Brown who recently dropped out to launch a private sector version of DOGE, said he supports a tuition freeze at Brown, which the compact requires.
“The fact that sky-high tuition at Brown has persisted for so long is why Americans no longer trust elite institutions to serve their interests,” Shieh told the Globe. “The compact promotes the fundamental American ideal of equality: equal access to education regardless of socioeconomic background, equal ability to voice one’s views, and equal opportunity to go to a top school irrespective of one’s race.”
But many higher education leaders and workers view the compact as a threat to academic freedom. On Thursday, Dartmouth professors and faculty members delivered a petition with more than 500 signatures to President Sian Leah Beilock calling on her not to sign the compact.
“The moment for you to exercise refusal in the name of Dartmouth’s academic integrity has arrived,” they wrote in the petition, dated Oct. 2.
“In order to preserve the integrity of our academic mission, you must refuse all unlawful demands and political threats that would undermine our academic freedom and self-governance,” the petition read.
“There’s a lot of concern about the compact,” Pamela Voekel, associate professor of history at Dartmouth, told the Globe. Voekel signed the petition, and said she was among “a crowd” of professors who delivered it to Beilock’s office following a meeting of Dartmouth’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors.
“There was a lot of discussion that the executive branch of government has no right at all to be asking for these things,” Voekel said.
“Before we even get to the kind of horrors represented within the compact, we don’t feel like the president should be negotiating at all,” she said. “This is a moment where they’re going after yet another pillar of civil societies.”
Beilock did not meet with the professors, but her secretary accepted the petition from them on her behalf, according to Voekel.
A spokesperson for Dartmouth did not respond to a request for comment on the petition or Beilock’s response to it.
The compact also stipulates that no more than 15 percent of undergraduate students may be on foreign visas, and no more than 5 percent of those students can be from any one particular country. Michael P. Steinberg, a history and music professor at Brown, said that if Brown signs the compact it would “compromise the integrity of my lectures and conversations in all of my classes.”
“Quality of dialogue, both inside and outside the classroom, really depends on having international students,” he said.
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.”
Some Brown professors pointed out that they already welcome conservative viewpoints.
Encouraging all viewpoints is “critical discourse that is at the center of universities and colleges that are doing their job,” said Faudree, the Brown anthropology and linguistics professor. “I think all of that would be subject to some kind of vague, nebulous, unclear litmus test for whether or not it rose to the level of belittling conservative ideas or in any other way, silencing what this administration considers to be disprivileged voices.”
Some professors also worry the compact could chill open discussion on politically charged issues, such as climate change and gender identity.
J. Timmons Roberts, an environmental studies and sociology professor and director of the Climate and Development Lab at Brown, said if Brown were to sign the compact, he’s unsure he would be able to teach.
Climate change policies were not always partisan, said Roberts. In the 1990s, he said, both sides of the political aisle agreed that it was an important issue that needed to be addressed. Since then, “The Republican party turned into one that resisted action on climate change, and even denied the reality of the issue,” said Roberts.
“Who is deciding what’s ‘belittling?’” asked Roberts. “To be able to talk about energy and climate politics, you have to identify who’s saying what and what they’re doing. And I can’t do that if I’m worried about belittling conservative ideas if someone else decides what belittling means.”
Free speech advocates also raised alarms. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression said while campus reform is necessary, the compact raised red flags, and could violate the First Amendment.
“Let’s be clear: Speech that offends or criticizes political views is not violence,” said Tyler Coward, FIRE’s lead counsel for government affairs, in a statement. “Conflating words with violence undermines both free speech and efforts to combat real threats.”
Annelise Orleck, a history professor at Dartmouth, called the compact a “Draconian exercise of control over curriculum.”
She said librarians and students are also involved in their own petition drives in opposition. She said it would give the administration in Washington far too much control over many aspects of the college.
“As I see the compact, it is the end of higher education as I have known it for my entire career,” she said.