Urging the University to Reject the Federal Government's “Compact”
October 7, 2025
Brown, along with eight other universities, has been presented with what the federal government is calling their “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.” We have been told that failing to sign would jeopardize Brown’s federal funding. The “invitation” to participate in such a pact is the very definition of extortion: sacrifice your principles or face material consequences that will compromise your capacity to fulfill your mission. The day that Brown can no longer choose which faculty to hire, which students to admit, how much tuition is charged, and what standards are used to evaluate academic work is the day we cede the academic freedom at the heart of the university’s mission. Moreover, since the Faculty Rules and Regulations make clear that the faculty have charge of the curriculum at Brown, the university administration does not have the authority to make many of the changes demanded by the compact without a faculty vote. The Brown University Chapter of the AAUP joins the ACLU of Rhode Island, the American Council of Learned Societies, the national executive of the AAUP, and countless other organizations in urging Brown administrators not to betray the values expressed in its own policy statement by signing what amounts to an oath of loyalty to a bullying federal government.
The deal Brown signed with the federal government barely nine weeks ago already demanded serious compromises to academic freedom in the form of government intrusion into the intellectual life of the university, a course whose risks our AAUP chapter noted at the time. Rather than satisfy the government, that resolution agreement seems to have marked Brown as a target for further attempts at control. Compliance with this most recent set of threats would effect a further slide toward becoming the instrument of a state with little tolerance for the free exchange and expression of ideas and no respect for the mission of higher education.
The Trump government is touting what it calls viewpoint diversity, which will presumably be measured by party affiliation. Given recent government actions to suppress the expression of ideas with which it disagrees—such as the unconstitutional policy of arresting, detaining, and deporting noncitizen students and faculty members for political criticism; the use of military force against U.S. citizens and residents; and U.S. involvement in internationally recognized criminal acts—the demand for compliance can only be interpreted as an attempt to restrict freedom of speech to those who express government-approved views, defeating the very purpose of higher education as a whole. According to the compact, those on campus who criticize conservative ideas can be silenced through the transformation or abolishing of the institutional unit with which they are affiliated or risk jeopardizing the prize money promised to the university in exchange for its fealty. Similarly, this pact demands acquiescence to the government’s new definitions of domestic terrorism and terrorist organizations and an endorsement of their definition of women and men as biologically and reproductively determined categories. The only way to comply with these stipulations would be to entirely stifle free speech at Brown, violating not only academic freedom but also the First Amendment.
We cannot overstate the precarious position the university will find itself in should we agree once more to try and meet vaguely worded and possibly unconstitutional standards and rules. Brown has always been committed to following the law; however, it would be wrong to agree, under threat, to these new and arbitrary obligations of questionable legality. Agreeing would only leave us in constant fear of liability for the compact’s ill-defined offenses and of ensuing punishments that would severely damage our operations, not to speak of the integrity and autonomy of our mission. In signing this so-called invitation, Brown would be forfeiting academic and administrative control to a federal government that has shown itself hostile to scholarship, free speech, dissent, and truth.
We urge the Brown administration to preserve the university’s identity as a space for free and earnest inquiry and its ability to perform its vital education and research work, even while we recognize that the financial costs of doing so may be steep. We also implore the administration to seek direct and broad input from faculty in making decisions that stand to irrevocably shape the structure, function, and values of our institution. We urge our administration to collaborate with other institutions to sue for the restoration of unconstitutionally withheld funds, noting that both Harvard and the AAUP have successfully challenged similar instances of federal overreach.
While the material consequences of refusal may be significant, the alternative is far worse. Sacrificing our values and principles would irreparably damage the foundations upon which our university has been built. We must, together, find another way.