As a handful of research universities decide whether to sign on to a compact with the Trump administration — which calls for substantial policy changes in exchange for federal “benefits” — one institution is soliciting broad feedback and tasking a working group with advising the university on how to respond.
The University of Virginia on Monday sent an online form to the campus community, asking survey takers whether there were aspects of the proposed “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” that they supported or opposed, and to explain their feelings. That input — due October 20, the deadline for UVa to provide feedback to the Trump administration — will be shared with the working group, responsible for examining “the financial and legal aspects of the proposal and its implications for the university’s mission and values.”
UVa’s interim president, Paul G. Mahoney, has acknowledged publicly that certain provisions in the document would be difficult for the university to endorse.
The agreement, which asks potential participants to limit international-student enrollment, define sex and gender, freeze tuition for five years, and protect conservative viewpoints in return for preferential access to federal dollars, raises serious questions about institutional autonomy, and already one recipient — the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — has said it “cannot support” the proposal.
The Chronicle obtained the list of people advising Mahoney on the implications of the compact. The working group is co-chaired by UVa.’s interim provost and its chief operating officer and also includes the vice presidents for research, enrollment, and global affairs; the vice president and chief student-affairs officer; the vice president and chief financial officer; the executive directors for state and federal government relations; the dean of the public-policy school; the secretary to the board; and the university counsel.
While there is no faculty or student representative to the working group, Jeri K. Seidman, an associate professor of commerce and chair of the Faculty Senate, said she hoped there would be other ways to provide input beyond just the survey. “We have a lot of surveys going on right now,” she noted, as the university searches for both a permanent president and provost.
Trump’s selection of UVa as a recipient comes amid a period of heightened state and federal scrutiny of the flagship. Over the summer, its president resigned under pressure from the U.S. Department of Justice over the institution’s diversity, equity, and inclusion commitments. Democrats in the state legislature have threatened budget consequences should the university join the compact and earlier this year sued three universities’ board chairs over the Republican governor’s board appointments.
Faculty senates and college councils, including at UVa, have condemned the proposal as an overreach that threatens their institutions’ independence, and encouraged presidents and boards to refuse to entertain the government’s outreach.
“Once you start saying some things are good and some things are not good, you’re conceding the principle that the federal government is allowed to tell university faculty and university students what they should think and teach,” said William I. Hitchcock, a UVa history professor and co-chair of the steering committee in the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. “And if you’ve made that concession, then it’s too late.”
