The University of Southern California on Thursday became the fourth institution to formally reject the current version of the Trump administration’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.”
“USC respectfully declines to participate in the proposed compact,” Beong-Soo Kim, the interim president, wrote in a public letter addressed to Education Secretary Linda McMahon. The letter said that USC “would be eager to contribute its insights and expertise” to a conversation about some of the problems in higher ed that the government identified.
A chief concern of Kim’s, he said, was that even though signing the compact was voluntary, “tying research benefits to it would, over time, undermine the same values of free inquiry and academic excellence that the compact seeks to promote.”
Kim then referenced threats to university autonomy around the world: “Other countries whose governments lack America’s commitment to freedom and democracy have shown how academic excellence can suffer when shifting external priorities tilt the research playing field away from free, meritocratic competition.”
USC was one of nine universities that originally received the compact from the Trump administration earlier this month. Members of the Trump administration later said it was open for any college to sign. In a cover letter sent to the University of Virginia, one of the recipients, government officials set a due date of October 20 for feedback on the document.
In the days before Kim issued his statement, several USC groups publicly urged him to decline the deal. Faculty members spoke passionately against it in a Zoom meeting of the Academic Senate attended by about 500 people. The leaders of five workers’ unions on campus called on USC to “categorically refuse to negotiate or comply with the demands of the compact.” Groups representing international and graduate students released statements condemning the compact, and a survey by the undergraduate student government found that 93 percent of voters favored rejecting it, according to the Daily Trojan, the student newspaper.
Even California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, weighed in. He threatened, in all caps, to withdraw state funding from any college that signed the compact. USC was the only California university at that time to have received it.
Faculty opinions on campus are more varied than the formal statements might suggest, said one Academic Senate leader. “As the vice president, I’m contacted by a lot of faculty from all across campus, and I’ve heard every view that you can imagine, from people that love it and people that hate it to people that think there’s some good and some, you know, less good,” said John G. Matsusaka, a professor in USC’s business school and vice president of the Academic Senate. “I think it would be wrong to think our community has only one thought or one voice, because we’re a huge community, and there’s a diversity of views.”
Matsusaka personally liked Kim’s response. “I thought the letter did a very good job explaining that we share a lot of the values and aspirations in the compact, but there’s parts of it that are contrary to some of the principles that we have,” he said.
The University of Pennsylvania also weighed in on the compact Thursday, declining to endorse the agreement as it stands now. President J. Larry Jameson said he provided “focused feedback” to the department that highlighted “areas of existing alignment as well as substantive concerns.” The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was the first of the original nine recipients to decline to support the current compact; Brown University followed suit on Wednesday.
