Faculty Plan National Day of Action to Protest Compact

Faculty and students at the nine universities first offered the Trump administration’s compact for preferential treatment will rally against it Friday in a national day of action. 

University of Virginia faculty, students, staff and alumni will participate in a press conference, rally and march Friday. Student leaders at UVA are among those at seven of the original nine universities to sign a joint letter against the compact.

“This unanimous response to the ‘Compact’ leaves little doubt where students, faculty, and staff at UVA and the other institutions stand: rather than capitulation, they assert that robust academic freedom, institutional independence, and solidarity amongst institutions is the answer to tyranny,” UVA faculty members wrote in a news release. “Through their clarity of purpose and courage, they stand against the growing tide of authoritarianism, using their voices and actions to stiffen their university administrators’ spines.” 

All nine universities—including the University of Arizona, Brown University, Dartmouth College, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas, UVA and Vanderbilt University—will participate in the day of action, though MIT officials have already said publicly they will not sign the agreement. (Brown rejected the agreement Wednesday.)

Since it was first circulated Oct. 1, the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” has received widespread criticism from faculty members and higher education leaders, including from the American Council on Education and the American Association of University Professors. Over the weekend, President Trump, on social media, invited the rest of higher ed to sign on.