NWLC Urges Schools to Reject Trump’s Compact: It Demands Allegiance, Not Academic Excellence

WASHINGTON — Today, the National Women’s Law Center, along with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Legal Defense Fund, and over 30 civil rights and advocacy organizations, sent a letter to college and university presidents and trustees, urging them to reject the Trump administration’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.”

This Compact encourages universities to violate the law, including the First Amendment and civil rights laws, in exchange for a promise of federal funds. Pressuring institutions of higher education to conform to the Trump administration’s disastrous and unlawful policy preferences to access federal funding, student visas, and other benefits is an extraordinary and dangerous overreach by the federal government.

“The Compact is the next stage of this administration’s two-pronged attack on education: close doors of opportunity for students and punish institutions that teach and discuss viewpoints with which the President disagrees,” the organizations tell university leaders in their letter. 

“The administration knows it is inviting your institution to violate the law, as its attempts to impose these same ideologically motivated conditions into other sources of federal funding have been repeatedly blocked by the courts.”

The Department of Education originally sent the letter to the University of Arizona, Brown University, Dartmouth College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas, Vanderbilt University, and the University of Virginia on Oct. 1. 

“The Compact doesn’t defend excellence, it demands allegiance. It’s nothing more than a gag order disguised as education policy, a political loyalty test that tramples the Constitution and federal civil rights laws,” said Shiwali Patel, senior director of education justice at the National Women’s Law Center. 

“This Compact turns the First Amendment and critical civil rights protections on their head, punishing universities for thinking freely and creating inclusive campuses, and rewarding them for political obedience. We implore each university to stand up for their autonomy as an institution of learning, and to fulfil their duty–and legal obligations–to their students and faculty by refusing to sign the compact, as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology rightfully did last week.”

Read our full letter here.

Civil rights and education advocacy groups who signed onto the letter include:

ACLU of Texas

Advocates for Trans Equality

African American Policy Forum

AFT, AFL-CIO

American Association of University Women (AAUW)

American Atheists

American Humanist Association

Asian Americans Advancing Justice – AAJC

Autistic Self Advocacy Network

Callisto

Campus Advocacy Prevention Professionals Association (CAPPA)

Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP)

Clearinghouse on Women’s Issues

Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund (DREDF)

EdTrust

End Rape On Campus

Equal Justice Society

Equal Rights Advocates

Feminist Majority Foundation

Freedom From Religion Foundation

Fund for Leadership, Equity, Access and Diversity (LEAD Fund)

Human Rights Campaign

Just Solutions

Know Your IX at Advocates for Youth

Legal Momentum, The Women’s Legal Defense and Education Fund

Muslim Public Affairs Council

National Education Association

National Organization for Women

National Urban League

National Women’s Political Caucus

Public Citizen

Public Counsel

Public Justice

Red Wine & Blue

Rocky Mountain Victim Law Center

Stop Sexual Assault in Schools

Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT)

Texas Appleseed

Texas Transgender Nondiscrimination Scholars

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

Transgender Education Network of Texas (TENT)

UNT chapter of the AAUP-AFT

Young Invincibles