7 ms·

With deadline looming 4 of 9 universities reject Trumps pact to remake higher ed

117 points by Bender 1y ago

andrewflnr 1y ago
So is that 4 of 9 so far, with the others not answering yet? 5 still deliberating vs 5 bent knees are two very different stories.
- quickthrowman 1y ago
  None of the 9 colleges have accepted so far, according to this article that was linked at the bottom of the article we are discussing: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/no-takers-yet-white-house-174246827.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/no-takers-yet-white-hous... They should have noted this in the article we are discussing since it does change the story, as you said.
  - overfeed 1y ago
    University of Texas put out a public statement early on, sounding very receptive and praising the Trump administration.
    - patagurbon 1y ago
      I bet they’re reading the room. They will have some problems if they’re the only ones who sign, but fewer if there’s at least two others who join them.
bookofjoe 1y ago
Up to 6 now: MIT Brown Penn University of Virginia Dartmouth University of Southern California No response yet (due tomorrow BTW) from: Vanderbilt University of Texas University of Arizona
- jauntywundrkind 1y ago
  The good part is that, now that we are up to numbers like these, you just can't sign onboard to this. You bet your behind Greg Abbott (Texas Governor) is doing everything he can to kiss the ring, gut his local university, push UT to joining. But no one could take UT seriously ever again, it'd be a laughingstock joke to accept state control like this.
- insane_dreamer 1y ago
  UT Board of Regents Chair already publicly expressed enthusiastic support. There will be a show down between the board and the academics.
aliljet 1y ago
Having casually attended one of these schools, I'm so confused about why they are even in this group. What is making this group of schools best suited for this sort of blackmail?
- patagurbon 1y ago
  It does seem fairly arbitrary. It’s not a list of schools with big labs, since Hopkins or Berkeley aren’t there. It doesn’t seem to be private vs state schools, it’s not Ivy League or blue state only. One potential reason to select a diverse set would be to point to a few who may be forced to accept by their state governments as examples to paint the refusers in a negative light.
- dboreham 1y ago
  There's probably some piece on Fox News, or a blog post from some influencer that cites these institutions. Most regime policy begins with some media outrage like this. You and I aren't exposed to that content so it seems arbitrary. I first realized this decades ago when I ran into someone socially who started on about how evil the red cross was. I'm like wtf? Then did some research and discovered some fringe belief originating in the Vietnam war. There are thousands of oddball grievances like this.
  - exceldrawing 1y ago
    > There's probably some piece on Fox News CNN published articles pushing the narrative that the 50 so called security experts believed Hunter's laptop was fake. It turned out to be true. CNN also famously had the two reporters standing in the same parking lot pretending to be in different geographic locations. Viewers called out their bullshit when the noticed the exact same traffic driving through the backgrounds of both reporters.
    - Valodim 1y ago
      Guess that makes them morally completely even then, is that your point? See also, whataboutism
skopje 1y ago
[flagged]
atomicnumber3 1y ago
I'm glad to see states fighting back, finally. I was never really too sure if, from a purely academic point of view, I thought a stronger federal government ("united we stand, divided we fall") or more independent states were a better "system". But I think the way the US is set up (districting, gerrymandering, redlined, electoral college, etc) makes it far too easy for fringe beliefs to take over and dictate policy. So having states simply being more independent puts up far more barriers to all of us just losing our freedom. I live in IL. (Not near Chicago). My kids public school only gets about 15% of its funding from the federal govt. We could just finally stop having our stupid flat income tax and make up the shortfall. It might set back the universal preschool system, perhaps (which would be a tragedy but better than complete destruction). Meanwhile, schools might not even exist in many other states if federal funding disappeared.
- quotemstr 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - convolvatron 1y ago
    the right answer to ideological purity tests is not more ideological purity tests
    - quotemstr 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - patagurbon 1y ago
        An eye for an eye is not how scientific progress is made.
        quotemstr 1y ago
        There's no conflict between 1) wishing nobody's eye be put out, and 2) thinking chronic and unrepentant eye-pokers have got it coming good and hard. The universities can stop the pain any time they want. All they have to do is recommit, seriously, to free speech and free pursuit of knowledge. What the universities are doing now is not conducive to scientific knowledge either. In fact, they produce a lot of anti-knowledge.
FridayoLeary 1y ago
These are the main policy points[1] 1.Equality in admissions- with certain exceptions, universities have to publish and commit to objective criteria for accepting new students. 2.Marketplace of ideas and civil discourse - a bit vague, but basically calling for non violent exchanges of opinions and ideas, specifically not discriminating against conservatives, who frankly are a significant minority at universities. 3.Nondiscrimination in faculty and administrative hiring 4.Institutional neutrality - frankly i'm not sure what that's supposed to mean 5.Student learning -Signatories must make certain “grade integrity” commitments, including neither “inflat[ing]” nor “deflat[ing]” grades for any “non-academic reason.” 6.Student equality -Signatories must treat students “as individuals and not on the basis of their immutable characteristics, with due exceptions for sex-based privacy, safety, and fairness” 7.Financial responsibility - a raft of ideas aimed at protecting students 8. More restrictions on foreign student admissions etc. 9.enforcement [1]i got all my information from this article:https://www.ropesgray.com/en/insights/alerts/2025/10/white-house-invites-nine-universities-to-enter-compact-in-exchange-for-access-to-federal-funds https://www.ropesgray.com/en/insights/alerts/2025/10/white-h...
- sidle_arount 1y ago
  These all sound like reasonable standards for universities to meet. The only unnecessary part is explicitly calling out conservative opinions, some of which will have no place in some university subjects, e.g. a geology student insisting the Earth is 6000 years old.
  - nine_zeros 1y ago
    These are all reasonable standards - if they came from Congress. They are not reasonable standards if they came for a fickle and corrupt mafia at gunpoint. The entire no kings protest is exactly about that - executive overreach overriding will of the people and causing irresponsible harm.
    - sidle_arount 1y ago
      I'm not sure I follow your argument. If these would be considered reasonable standards if exactly the same were proposed by Congress, then how would they cause harm if implemented on request of the Executive?
brianwawok 1y ago
Many schools without huge endowments are in a tough spot, they really need the federal money but it goes against everything that they have fought for, for a very long time. I don’t envy those having to make these decisions.
hypeatei 1y ago
We've observed what happens when you cave to Trump and his goons: they will want more and turn on you anyway. ABC settled and paid Trump $16M just for his FCC chair to later threaten their license over Jimmy Kimmel's comments. I'm glad these universities have a spine and aren't signing onto this attempt at an authoritarian takeover of higher education.
ternaryoperator 1y ago
Univ of Virginia announced yesterday they would no sign. So now it’s five universities.
Levitz 1y ago
[flagged]
bfio 1y ago
[dead]
patagurbon 1y ago
This push to force ideological “balance” on universities is incredibly dangerous. The pursuit of truth is difficult and has its pitfalls but it naturally leads to the dominance of certain viewpoints, which hopefully approximate the truth. What the Feds are doing here is just a hop skip and a jump from forcing universities to hire young Earth creationists alongside archaeologists, climate change deniers alongside climate scientists, etc. Universities and the research they do must inform politics, but the reverse risks destroying the research enterprise all together.
- quotemstr 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - bonsai_spool 1y ago
    > Yet universities continue to push it, despite all evidence, because it flatters a certain worldview > So it is for many university programs There should be a 'marketplace of ideas' which absolutely does not mean that your ideas should be the only ones you identify in universities. It doesn't even mean that you should see your ideas in any university. Just that, if you make suasive statements, you will attract followers—and maybe you can go ahead and make your own university. The real problem that this sort of 'DEI-killed-all-intellectual-sophistication' arguments elide is that we're not educating our children (any of them, purple, green, or whatever race you wish), and instead are feeding them social media and other attention-grabbing things. On top of that, those of us who follow right-of-center media now have this continual push to believe even more far-fetched things daily. So how can you possibly imagine that right-of-center thinking will have a place in the marketplace if one element of being right-of-center is rejecting truth?
  - patagurbon 1y ago
    > universities pushing restorative justice Universities? Can you point to a university whose explicit policy is restorative justice? That’s not how universities generally work. You’re probably taking issue with an individual department which naturally has a certain research and academic history. Are you prepared to cite the works prepared and researched by individuals at a university or lab which counter the research on restorative justice? If not then either it doesn’t exist and we’re operating on anecdata or it does exist and the research system is proceeding exactly as intended. You are also comparing the outcomes of policy to the work of scientists and philosophers without analyzing the specifics of imperfect policy meeting an imperfect world. Research and knowledge work in general is often wrong. That’s not the point. For decades large parts of the genome were believed to be garbage. That wasn’t amended by the government it was amended by researchers following the scientific process. The politicization of the process doesn’t speed it up, it simply introduces an outside malignant influence to an otherwise slow but steady process of inquiry.
credit_guy 1y ago
If I'm one of these universities, the rational course of action is to say no. Because you never know when this administration will change its mind, or try to change the terms of the deal and impose new conditions. I think the only reason for some universities to delay coming with an answer is that they have to first have a conversation with their biggest donors, and make sure they don't upset them.
0xbadcafebee 1y ago
[flagged]
- DaSHacka 1y ago
  [flagged]
exceldrawing 1y ago
[flagged]
- grumio 1y ago
  > someone with integrity, like Trump Can you provide some examples of Trump showing integrity? Yesterday he posted an AI slop video of him bombing protestors with poop while wearing a crown, so I'm skeptical. https://nypost.com/2025/10/19/us-news/trump-posts-wild-ai-video-showing-him-flying-fighter-jet-dropping-sewage-on-no-kings-protesters/ https://nypost.com/2025/10/19/us-news/trump-posts-wild-ai-vi...
- insane_dreamer 1y ago
  > when someone with integrity, like Trump LOL that better be sarcasm Trump easily has the least integrity of any president in US history, and probably not even close
duxup 1y ago
These whole thought police type policies baked into these proposals are absurd. https://www.harvard.edu/research-funding/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/2025/04/Letter-Sent-to-Harvard-2025-04-11.pdf https://www.harvard.edu/research-funding/wp-content/uploads/...

117 points by Bender 1y ago

So is that 4 of 9 so far, with the others not answering yet? 5 still deliberating vs 5 bent knees are two very different stories.

quickthrowman 1y ago
None of the 9 colleges have accepted so far, according to this article that was linked at the bottom of the article we are discussing: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/no-takers-yet-white-house-174246827.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/no-takers-yet-white-hous... They should have noted this in the article we are discussing since it does change the story, as you said.
- overfeed 1y ago
  University of Texas put out a public statement early on, sounding very receptive and praising the Trump administration.
  - patagurbon 1y ago
    I bet they’re reading the room. They will have some problems if they’re the only ones who sign, but fewer if there’s at least two others who join them.

bookofjoe 1y ago

Up to 6 now: MIT Brown Penn University of Virginia Dartmouth University of Southern California No response yet (due tomorrow BTW) from: Vanderbilt University of Texas University of Arizona

jauntywundrkind 1y ago
The good part is that, now that we are up to numbers like these, you just can't sign onboard to this. You bet your behind Greg Abbott (Texas Governor) is doing everything he can to kiss the ring, gut his local university, push UT to joining. But no one could take UT seriously ever again, it'd be a laughingstock joke to accept state control like this.
insane_dreamer 1y ago
UT Board of Regents Chair already publicly expressed enthusiastic support. There will be a show down between the board and the academics.

aliljet 1y ago

Having casually attended one of these schools, I'm so confused about why they are even in this group. What is making this group of schools best suited for this sort of blackmail?

patagurbon 1y ago
It does seem fairly arbitrary. It’s not a list of schools with big labs, since Hopkins or Berkeley aren’t there. It doesn’t seem to be private vs state schools, it’s not Ivy League or blue state only. One potential reason to select a diverse set would be to point to a few who may be forced to accept by their state governments as examples to paint the refusers in a negative light.
dboreham 1y ago
There's probably some piece on Fox News, or a blog post from some influencer that cites these institutions. Most regime policy begins with some media outrage like this. You and I aren't exposed to that content so it seems arbitrary. I first realized this decades ago when I ran into someone socially who started on about how evil the red cross was. I'm like wtf? Then did some research and discovered some fringe belief originating in the Vietnam war. There are thousands of oddball grievances like this.
- exceldrawing 1y ago
  > There's probably some piece on Fox News CNN published articles pushing the narrative that the 50 so called security experts believed Hunter's laptop was fake. It turned out to be true. CNN also famously had the two reporters standing in the same parking lot pretending to be in different geographic locations. Viewers called out their bullshit when the noticed the exact same traffic driving through the backgrounds of both reporters.
  - Valodim 1y ago
    Guess that makes them morally completely even then, is that your point? See also, whataboutism

skopje 1y ago

[flagged]

atomicnumber3 1y ago

I'm glad to see states fighting back, finally. I was never really too sure if, from a purely academic point of view, I thought a stronger federal government ("united we stand, divided we fall") or more independent states were a better "system". But I think the way the US is set up (districting, gerrymandering, redlined, electoral college, etc) makes it far too easy for fringe beliefs to take over and dictate policy. So having states simply being more independent puts up far more barriers to all of us just losing our freedom. I live in IL. (Not near Chicago). My kids public school only gets about 15% of its funding from the federal govt. We could just finally stop having our stupid flat income tax and make up the shortfall. It might set back the universal preschool system, perhaps (which would be a tragedy but better than complete destruction). Meanwhile, schools might not even exist in many other states if federal funding disappeared.

quotemstr 1y ago
[flagged]
- convolvatron 1y ago
  the right answer to ideological purity tests is not more ideological purity tests
  - quotemstr 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - patagurbon 1y ago
      An eye for an eye is not how scientific progress is made.
      - quotemstr 1y ago
        There's no conflict between 1) wishing nobody's eye be put out, and 2) thinking chronic and unrepentant eye-pokers have got it coming good and hard. The universities can stop the pain any time they want. All they have to do is recommit, seriously, to free speech and free pursuit of knowledge. What the universities are doing now is not conducive to scientific knowledge either. In fact, they produce a lot of anti-knowledge.

FridayoLeary 1y ago

These are the main policy points[1] 1.Equality in admissions- with certain exceptions, universities have to publish and commit to objective criteria for accepting new students. 2.Marketplace of ideas and civil discourse - a bit vague, but basically calling for non violent exchanges of opinions and ideas, specifically not discriminating against conservatives, who frankly are a significant minority at universities. 3.Nondiscrimination in faculty and administrative hiring 4.Institutional neutrality - frankly i'm not sure what that's supposed to mean 5.Student learning -Signatories must make certain “grade integrity” commitments, including neither “inflat[ing]” nor “deflat[ing]” grades for any “non-academic reason.” 6.Student equality -Signatories must treat students “as individuals and not on the basis of their immutable characteristics, with due exceptions for sex-based privacy, safety, and fairness” 7.Financial responsibility - a raft of ideas aimed at protecting students 8. More restrictions on foreign student admissions etc. 9.enforcement [1]i got all my information from this article:https://www.ropesgray.com/en/insights/alerts/2025/10/white-house-invites-nine-universities-to-enter-compact-in-exchange-for-access-to-federal-funds https://www.ropesgray.com/en/insights/alerts/2025/10/white-h...

sidle_arount 1y ago
These all sound like reasonable standards for universities to meet. The only unnecessary part is explicitly calling out conservative opinions, some of which will have no place in some university subjects, e.g. a geology student insisting the Earth is 6000 years old.
- nine_zeros 1y ago
  These are all reasonable standards - if they came from Congress. They are not reasonable standards if they came for a fickle and corrupt mafia at gunpoint. The entire no kings protest is exactly about that - executive overreach overriding will of the people and causing irresponsible harm.
  - sidle_arount 1y ago
    I'm not sure I follow your argument. If these would be considered reasonable standards if exactly the same were proposed by Congress, then how would they cause harm if implemented on request of the Executive?

brianwawok 1y ago

Many schools without huge endowments are in a tough spot, they really need the federal money but it goes against everything that they have fought for, for a very long time. I don’t envy those having to make these decisions.

hypeatei 1y ago

We've observed what happens when you cave to Trump and his goons: they will want more and turn on you anyway. ABC settled and paid Trump $16M just for his FCC chair to later threaten their license over Jimmy Kimmel's comments. I'm glad these universities have a spine and aren't signing onto this attempt at an authoritarian takeover of higher education.

ternaryoperator 1y ago

Univ of Virginia announced yesterday they would no sign. So now it’s five universities.

Levitz 1y ago

[flagged]

bfio 1y ago

[dead]

patagurbon 1y ago

This push to force ideological “balance” on universities is incredibly dangerous. The pursuit of truth is difficult and has its pitfalls but it naturally leads to the dominance of certain viewpoints, which hopefully approximate the truth. What the Feds are doing here is just a hop skip and a jump from forcing universities to hire young Earth creationists alongside archaeologists, climate change deniers alongside climate scientists, etc. Universities and the research they do must inform politics, but the reverse risks destroying the research enterprise all together.

quotemstr 1y ago
[flagged]
- bonsai_spool 1y ago
  > Yet universities continue to push it, despite all evidence, because it flatters a certain worldview > So it is for many university programs There should be a 'marketplace of ideas' which absolutely does not mean that your ideas should be the only ones you identify in universities. It doesn't even mean that you should see your ideas in any university. Just that, if you make suasive statements, you will attract followers—and maybe you can go ahead and make your own university. The real problem that this sort of 'DEI-killed-all-intellectual-sophistication' arguments elide is that we're not educating our children (any of them, purple, green, or whatever race you wish), and instead are feeding them social media and other attention-grabbing things. On top of that, those of us who follow right-of-center media now have this continual push to believe even more far-fetched things daily. So how can you possibly imagine that right-of-center thinking will have a place in the marketplace if one element of being right-of-center is rejecting truth?
- patagurbon 1y ago
  > universities pushing restorative justice Universities? Can you point to a university whose explicit policy is restorative justice? That’s not how universities generally work. You’re probably taking issue with an individual department which naturally has a certain research and academic history. Are you prepared to cite the works prepared and researched by individuals at a university or lab which counter the research on restorative justice? If not then either it doesn’t exist and we’re operating on anecdata or it does exist and the research system is proceeding exactly as intended. You are also comparing the outcomes of policy to the work of scientists and philosophers without analyzing the specifics of imperfect policy meeting an imperfect world. Research and knowledge work in general is often wrong. That’s not the point. For decades large parts of the genome were believed to be garbage. That wasn’t amended by the government it was amended by researchers following the scientific process. The politicization of the process doesn’t speed it up, it simply introduces an outside malignant influence to an otherwise slow but steady process of inquiry.

credit_guy 1y ago

If I'm one of these universities, the rational course of action is to say no. Because you never know when this administration will change its mind, or try to change the terms of the deal and impose new conditions. I think the only reason for some universities to delay coming with an answer is that they have to first have a conversation with their biggest donors, and make sure they don't upset them.

0xbadcafebee 1y ago

[flagged]

DaSHacka 1y ago
[flagged]

exceldrawing 1y ago

[flagged]

grumio 1y ago
> someone with integrity, like Trump Can you provide some examples of Trump showing integrity? Yesterday he posted an AI slop video of him bombing protestors with poop while wearing a crown, so I'm skeptical. https://nypost.com/2025/10/19/us-news/trump-posts-wild-ai-video-showing-him-flying-fighter-jet-dropping-sewage-on-no-kings-protesters/ https://nypost.com/2025/10/19/us-news/trump-posts-wild-ai-vi...
insane_dreamer 1y ago
> when someone with integrity, like Trump LOL that better be sarcasm Trump easily has the least integrity of any president in US history, and probably not even close

duxup 1y ago

These whole thought police type policies baked into these proposals are absurd. https://www.harvard.edu/research-funding/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/2025/04/Letter-Sent-to-Harvard-2025-04-11.pdf https://www.harvard.edu/research-funding/wp-content/uploads/...