Multiple civil rights organizations and advocacy groups have spoken out against a series of sweeping guidelines that the White House invited nine universities — including Penn — to sign in exchange for expanded federal benefits.
The compact, which the government sent to nine universities’ administrations on Wednesday evening, signals the White House’s latest push for influence on college campuses. Several organizations specializing in free speech, civil rights, and academic freedom have since raised concerns about how the agreement could shape the future of higher education.
The executive committee of Penn’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors characterized the compact as a “thinly-veiled attempt to restrict academic freedom” in an Oct. 2 public statement.
“When an invitation is accompanied by consequences for not accepting it, it is in fact a threat, not an invitation,” the faculty group wrote. “Whatever the consequences of refusal, agreeing would threaten the very mission of the University.”
The executive committee pointed to the federal government’s “intensifying political interference into higher education,” adding that “sacrificing our values … would irreparably damage the fabric of our university.”
AAUP-Penn Chapter President Jessa Lingel similarly criticized the compact as the result of Penn's previous agreement with the federal government.
“Penn should have stood up for its values in prior negotiations with the federal government, but hopefully our administration has learned its lesson and will do the right thing here,” Lingel wrote in a statement to The Daily Pennsylvanian.
Lingel — who also teaches in the Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies Department at Penn — added that the new compact amounts to a “loyalty oath.”
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“The compact represents a total violation of academic freedom, shared governance and an open democracy,” she wrote. “So now we'll get to see what kind of university we have - one that stands up to tyranny or one that capitulates.”
Tyler Coward, the lead counsel for government affairs at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, raised concerns about the compact’s potential ramifications for campus free speech.
“All too often, universities choose to have better access to federal dollars than to stand up for the rights of their students and faculty,” Coward said. “They choose money over censorship all the time.”
Coward called the possible precedent set by the compact “incredible chilling,” adding that some “institutions … might feel like they need to clamp down on particular academics or student groups, if those particular academics are particularly forceful in their beliefs or in opposition to certain ideas.”
While Coward acknowledged the “good language in here about promoting academic freedom,” he rebuked the federal government’s “conflation that words and even robust debate are actual violence.”
In an Oct. 2 statement written on behalf of the larger FIRE organization, Coward broadly painted the agreement as “overreaching government coercion that tries to end-run around the First Amendment to impose an official orthodoxy.”
“A government that can reward colleges and universities for speech it favors today can punish them for speech it dislikes tomorrow,” Coward continued. “That’s not reform."
Other organizations — including the National Women’s Law Center and the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania — also commented on the compact’s implications for student and faculty civil rights.
In an interview with the DP, Shiwali Patel — a Title IX expert and NWLC’s senior director of education justice — characterized the list of demands as “shameful, discriminatory, and wrong.”
“This seeks to undermine First Amendment principles and protections,” Patel said. “There's a clear ideological push here when it talks specifically about protecting conservative viewpoints.”
Patel added that she believes the compact “turns Title IX on its head” and will continue to enforce “gender policing of anyone who does not conform to someone else's idea of womanhood.”
“There isn't a track record by any means of prioritizing women's equality — they only raise it when they're trying to remove protections from trans women and girls,” she added. “We clearly see through that and we know that these measures that they're taking actually do not protect women, and they only would harm women and girls.”
Patel emphasized that barring transgender women from women’s spaces “distorts the purpose of Title IX and its history” by targeting an “already vulnerable population."
Harold Jordan — who serves as the senior education equity coordinator at the ACLU of Pennsylvania — also discussed the “risks” for universities who sign the compact.
According to Jordan, the agreement will likely face legal challenges due to its “improper sharing of private student information with DHS and State,” the “crackdown on protests [without] granting universities the discretion to determine which actions seriously disrupt the learning process,” and the expansion of “federal power over how schools use non-governmental funds.”
“Schools have already signed a boatload of documents certifying that they are in compliance with an alphabet soup of federal laws,” he wrote. “The Trump Administration is demanding more: that schools adopt its political priorities at the expense of what's best and fair for students and the entire school community.”
