BY HANK REICHMAN
“If at first you don’t succeed . . .” The Trump administration is at it again. With their much-ballyhooed “Compact for Excellence in Higher Education” a fantastic flop and their campaign of intimidation generating growing resistance, they’re now trying a new tactic in their ongoing efforts to reshape higher education to accord with their reactionary vision. But it’s really the same old, same old, now in a supposedly more attractive–or at least less obviously threatening–package.
The AAUP’s major report on the administration’s assault on higher education, Extorted Compliance, released last month, characterized the Trump campaign to compel universities to sign agreements “under which institutions are obligated to accept a laundry list of imposed conditions and policies—and sometimes pay a hefty ransom—in order to qualify for essential federal funding,” as nothing short of “a massive extortion racket.” Within that campaign, the report concluded, the administration’s October 2025 proposed compact was “more a supplement to than a replacement for” that extortion.
Happily, the compact was widely condemned as a threat to impose “nothing less than government control of a university’s basic and necessary freedoms,” to quote a statement issued at the time by the American Council on Education and endorsed by thirty-six national organizations, including the AAUP. Of nine prominent universities initially invited to sign the agreement, seven rejected it outright. Beyond the original group, only three smaller, conservative-leaning institutions expressed a willingness to sign.
So now Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, taking time from her ongoing work dismantling her own department, has released what the AAUP has appropriately dubbed Compact 2.0, “A National Call to Action to University Presidents and Governing Boards,” in the form of a letter to university presidents and board members inviting them to publish answers to a series of loaded questions designed to encourage institutions to embrace the right-wing educational agenda. While the letter is not explicitly linked to funding access, even a department spokesperson acknowledged what just about everyone knows to be the case: that this “Call to Action” is, as the Chronicle of Higher Education reports, designed to be “a lever for change.”
“This is trying to encourage radical reform to get universities back to truth-seeking, to merit, to academic rigor, to improve universities,”Jonathan Pidluzny, deputy chief of staff for strategy and implementation at the education department told the Chronicle. (As if universities left to their own devices have abandoned truth-seeking, merit, and rigor — well, most faculty certainly never have.) “It’s part of a multipronged strategy, he added, “to continue to hold higher education accountable.” (To whom and to what?)
In other words, it’s a sneakier mode of extortion.
But it’s also a pretty transparent form of sneakiness. That can be seen in how the questions posed in McMahon’s letter are formulated. Taken in isolation they can appear to be relatively neutral. But in context their meaning is clear. Moreover, each group of questions is preceded by statements guiding how they should be interpreted. Take this, for instance:
Some academic disciplines and departments have subordinated the scholarly pursuit to
political and social goals, as documented in the recent Report on the State of Scholarship in the Humanities and the Humanistic Social Sciences. When disciplines skew toward one side of the ideological spectrum, the truth-seeking function of the university suffers and public trust declines. How will your institution encourage intellectual pluralism in all its academic units? How will your faculty hiring and evaluation practices support academic vitality and ensure that all relevant perspectives are taken seriously? And how will your school ensure the research enterprise is dedicated to advancing knowledge, deepening understanding, and serving the American people who fund it?
Never mind that the cited report has been widely criticized as itself skewing toward one side of the ideological spectrum. Never mind that the same administration encourages the creation of explicitly political centers for civic learning in which scholarship is entirely subordinated to the regime’s own politics. Never mind the assumption that universities must take “all relevant perspectives” seriously when it is in fact precisely the job of universities to distinguish among perspectives in the never-ending search for truth.
But readers of this blog surely get the point. It’s more old wine in a new, perhaps a tad more deceptive, bottle. “You threaten to take someone’s money away unless they do something, and then the next time, you just imply that some bad things might happen and then ask for basically the same things?” asked Dominique Baker, an associate professor who studies higher-ed policy at the University of Delaware, quoted in the Chronicle.
Of course, the letter does mark a retreat of sorts, a victory for those of us—mainly the faculty—who have resisted the extortion campaign. Yet what is discouraging about this latest effort is that four university presidents—Andrew Martin at Washington University in St. Louis, Michael Crow at Arizona State University, Doug Girod at the University of Kansas, and Ronald Daniels at Johns Hopkins University—along with the Association of American Universities collaborated with the department in its formulation.
Extorted Compliance concluded that in responding to the Trump extortion campaign “most trustees and administrators have at best been caught flat-footed, and some appear even to have welcomed governmental intrusion.” The report cited one observer who noted that the administration and many university administrators “share a common vision of the university as a hierarchical institution run from the top down, with students and faculty forced to obey rather than participating in a system of shared governance”—hence their willingness to compromise or, worse, to adopt as their own elements of the Trump administration’s program.
Sadly, the actions of the AAU and these four presidents only amplify the importance of these conclusions. In contrast, however, the response of Ross A. Mugler, president of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, is encouraging. Reform in higher ed, he told the Chronicle, should be “shaped by fiduciary responsibility and the long-term interest of our institutions and their students, not by political coercion.”
In a joint statement AAUP President Todd Wolfson and AFT President Randi Weingarten get it right:
Let’s be clear: Compact 2.0 lacks many of the most egregious elements of its predecessor, including threats to federal research funding, offers of preferential government treatment and specific attacks on transgender people. That’s a victory for the faculty, students, staff, and unions who resisted the original compact. It affirms what the AAUP and AFT have been saying from the beginning: The answer to authoritarianism is organized resistance—not preemptive compliance. . . .
As with the first compact, the best path forward is for higher education workers to organize and demand that their administrations and governing boards reject Compact 2.0. There is every reason to believe we can do so again.
The solution to opaque college admissions, skyrocketing tuition, the onslaught of artificial intelligence and degraded academic freedom isn’t the racism, program closures, restrictions on free speech and xenophobia embodied in Compact 2.0. Instead, we must continue fighting for what higher education should be: debt-free, an engine of innovation and economic opportunity, a driver of lifesaving research, a place where students prepare for meaningful careers and thriving lives, and an institution that welcomes everyone.
That is the future higher education deserves—not one dictated by partisan political demands.
Contributing editor Hank Reichman is professor emeritus of history at California State University, East Bay; former AAUP vice-president and chair of the AAUP Foundation; and from 2012-2021 Chair of AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. His book, The Future of Academic Freedom, based in part on posts to this blog, was published in 2019. His Understanding Academic Freedom was published in October, 2021; a second edition came out in March 2025. He is a member of AAUP’s Committee on College and University Governance and President of the At-Large Chapter.
