Six weeks after United States Secretary of Education Linda McMahon called on universities to pursue institutional reform, faculty members are considering the implications of the request and whether Penn should respond.
The Aug. 3 letter urged universities to publicly disclose how they intend to reform admissions, academics, free speech, intellectual diversity, and align with national interests by the end of the year. In interviews, faculty members said that crafting a response would pose legal and strategic challenges — and that it might be better not to respond at all.
Political science professor Marci Hamilton, an expert in constitutional law, described McMahon’s letter as “a dramatic scaleback” from the preferential funding compact sent to Penn last October. She said she would “treat it as informational.”
Last fall, the Trump administration sent the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” to nine universities, including Penn. The document laid out sweeping guidelines governing admissions, pricing, and hiring that institutions could agree to in exchange for federal funding benefits.
When the University rejected the proposal, a White House spokesperson told The Daily Pennsylvanian that universities that decline the compact would no longer receive federal funding.
“Any higher education institution unwilling to assume accountability and confront these overdue and necessary reforms will find itself without future government and taxpayers support,” the spokesperson wrote at the time.
Many of the broad reforms outlined in the compact reappeared in McMahon’s call to action. Unlike the compact, however, the letter did not specify consequences for failing to comply with the department’s request.
“This is a list of the federal government’s priorities right now,” Hamilton explained. “But it never says that funding will be threatened or withdrawn just based on either not responding or not fulfilling their agenda.”
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Graduate School of Education professor Jonathan Zimmerman, whose expertise includes the history and politics of education, characterized the letter as “not an olive branch exactly, but a lot gentler than the earlier policies.”
“It’s much less directly threatening than all the other things the Trump administration did,” he added.
Still, legal studies professor Amanda Shanor warned that the White House’s track record of intervening in higher education shed “a different light” on the letter.
“If it was just the first thing in the context of an administration’s interaction with higher education, I don’t know how worried I would be,” Shanor stated.
She argued that, in the context of the Trump administration’s approach to universities, the letter “comes across more like a mobster who’s like, ‘You have a nice university there. I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to it.’”
As some colleges, including those in the Florida and North Carolina university systems, begin to publicly respond to the letter, administrators at Penn will have to decide whether and how to reply.
A request for comment was left with a University spokesperson.
The tri-chairs of the Faculty Senate wrote in a statement that the Senate Executive Committee discussed the letter in its most recent meeting.
“We considered a range of perspectives and possible approaches to the issues raised. At present, the Faculty Senate does not have a specific plan for independent action,” the tri-chairs wrote. “The Faculty Senate stands ready to support the administration as it reviews the letter and formulates an appropriate response on behalf of the University.”
GSE professor Julie Wollman, whose research focuses on the communications of university presidents, said she does not believe the letter compels universities to respond — especially since “nothing happened” after Penn rejected the compact.
“You’re directly threatened, and you say no, and then you get something that doesn’t contain threats,” she explained. “You really don’t have to respond to it.”
Wollman — who previously served as president of Widener University — said there was “uncertainty” about what would happen if universities didn’t respond last year, but no similar “imperative” exists for the letter.
Hamilton similarly said she wouldn’t feel an “obligation to respond.” She added that the state school systems that have responded revealed “what we know about their politics.”
“I think that counsels even stronger in favor of universities like the University of Pennsylvania taking the letter for what it is and pursuing its agenda for its students and its alumni,” she explained. “And Penn’s doing that.”
Shanor said that the letter puts Penn “between a rock and a hard place.”
“I’m a little bit worried that unwary or less well-represented universities will do something that may put them in a bind without realizing,” Shanor said.
In an environment of continued federal pressure on higher education, uncertainty remains about whether the Trump administration could retaliate against universities that do not respond to the letter.
Hamilton said that while the letter is not inherently unconstitutional, it could prove to be if the universities that fail to comply with its requests are punished.
“I do think that there’s an atmosphere of repression coming from this administration about universities and funding, but I don’t think the University would have standing to challenge this letter on that theory,” Hamilton said. “Now, if it so happens that they don’t answer and then they lose funding, well, now I think they’ve got an argument.”
Shanor argued that the letter exists against a backdrop of “unconstitutional” activity, in which the Trump administration has bypassed normal procedures to cut off funding to universities.
The White House, she stated, has threatened or withdrawn funding to pressure colleges into agreements with “vague, nebulous terms.”
“That stuff is clearly unconstitutional under the First Amendment,” Shanor said. “They are things that the government is trying to get universities to sign up to because those universities feel like they have a financial gun to the head.”
“I honestly think this is not about higher education or trust in higher education,” Wollman concluded. “It’s a power struggle.”
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Senior reporter Alex Dash covers administration and can be reached at dash@thedp.com. At Penn, he studies history and political science. Follow him on X @AlexBDash.
