The National Women’s Law Center, LDF, and Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, co-led a letter to college and University Presidents and Trustees urging them to reject the Trump administration’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.” On October 1st, 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 received the Compact, and now there is reporting that the Compact has been extended to all universities. As the Massachusetts Institute of Technology did last week, each institution presented with this Compact should reject it. 

 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. Rather than ensure academic excellence in higher education, this Compact seeks to undermine core constitutional and civil rights protections and academic freedoms that are crucial to education, to a functioning democracy, and to your institution. It demands ideology over critical thinking, exclusion over inclusion, and discrimination over equal opportunity, harming student success and readiness for the future. We implore you not to acquiesce to such unlawful demands and remind you of your obligation to follow the law. 

Read the full letter and list of signers here.