US President Donald Trump has launched an unprecedented move targeting top American universities, offering them federal funding in return for promoting conservative ideas on their campuses. The initiative, conveyed through a 10-point “compact,” was sent out from the White House on Wednesday, called “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” was reported by Wall Street Journal. Under the deal, universities that sign on are promised “multiple positive benefits,” including “substantial and meaningful federal grants.” In exchange, they must ensure a “vibrant marketplace of ideas on campus,” elevate the profile of conservative viewpoints, and eliminate academic departments that “purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.” Other key stipulations of the compact include banning race or sex as factors in student admissions and hiring, freezing tuition fees for five years, and capping international undergraduate students at 15%. This includes promoting a wide range of views and “transforming or abolishing institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas,” according to the compact. Each university would also have to commission an annual poll of students and faculty to evaluate adherence to the pact. Although only nine universities have been formally approached with the compact, the memorandum carries an implicit warning to all federally funded institutions. It states that while “institutions of higher education are free to develop models and values other than those” in the memo, this comes at the cost of losing all federal funding streams. The terms would be enforced by the Justice Department, with violators losing access to the compact’s benefits for no less than a year. Repeated violations would trigger a two-year penalty. The nine universities named in the initiative are Vanderbilt University, Dartmouth College, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Arizona, Brown University, and the University of Virginia. The Trump administration has leveraged its control over federal funding at several other universities, including Harvard and Columbia, by withholding research grants while pushing for changes to their governance and policies.
