Once global signifiers of elite intellectual achievement, many of the top universities in the United States have been subjected to scrutiny, investigation and federal action. Universities such as University of Pennsylvania, Columbia and Brown have engaged in extensive negotiations to try to carve out space for institutional integrity.
Another broad measure launched by the Trump Administration has been a proposed compact, signing which would grant universities priority access to federal funding. The Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education was first opened for nine schools, then 12, and then generally thrown open to all academic institutions. Commitment to intellectual diversity, capping international enrollment and eschewing race or gender-related factors while considering potential students are part of the voluntary compact.
We take a look at how universities have fared in the current scenario, and outline some ways in which the Trump Administration has sought to make an example of some of America’s most famous institutions.
Harvard as a blueprint and an example
Several publications have noted that the Trump presidency is seeking to make a blueprint of the prestigious universities it has targeted at the outset.
Harvard stands at the forefront of a pushback to the Trump administration’s demands, accompanied by threats of massive funding cuts. The Trump administration halted $2.2 billion’s worth of federal grants to Harvard. According to a report by The New York Times, the remaining federal contracts with the university, worth around $100 million, were cancelled in May-June 2025. The university has been considering spending $500 million to resolve its clash with the government. However differences have emerged over where this money would go; while Harvard has been willing to pay it into work-force programmes, it is not prepared to pay it as a fine to the federal government.
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Now, after a ruling from federal judge Allison D. Burroughs that the sweeping blockade of funds to Harvard is illegal, the administration has said that it will restart the flow of federal research monies. Individual researchers have reportedly received notices intimating a restoration of their funding
However, the Trump administration has not backed down. In December 2025, it officially appealed the decision to restore Harvard’s funds. The case will be heard by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
Meanwhile, other measures have continue to be taken against Harvard all year.
On September 19, the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights issued a Denial of Access letter to Harvard, following what it called Harvard’s continued refusal to provide documents and information as part of an OCR compliance review to determine if Harvard is illegally considering race in its undergraduate admissions process.
On September 19, the Education Department’s Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) announced that it has placed Harvard on Heightened Cash Monitoring (HCM) status following “growing concerns” regarding the university’s financial position. HCM status requires Harvard to use its own funds for federal student aid before drawing on DOE funds. Students will continue to have access to federal funding, but Harvard will be required to cover the initial disbursements as a guardrail to ensure Harvard is spending taxpayer funds responsibly, the notice states.
The FSA has required Harvard to post an irrevocable letter of credit for $36 million or provide other financial protection that is acceptable to the Department, owing to three triggering events: a determination by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that Harvard violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color, and national origin; the risk of losing access to all federal student aid funding due its noncompliance with requests from the Department’s Office of Civil Rights; and the issuance of $1 billion in bonds, amounting to 15% of Harvard’s revenue, to finance its operations.
“Taking on the additional debt may make it materially more difficult for Harvard to satisfy any liabilities with the Department in the event that it loses access to federal funding,” a press release announcing the decision read, adding that Harvard had also laid off several people, besides freezing hiring and salaries.
In September, HHS also started a process of debarment to block Harvard from receiving any future research grants. Debarment is the formal method for the government to blacklist contractors. In May, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon had simply issued a letter disqualifying Harvard from future federal funding.
The ten-point memo for nine universities
A cornerstone for the administration’s university policies this year is the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” launched in October 2025.
In a letter to select university presidents, Ms. McMahon, White House official May Mailman and Vincent Haley, the director of the Domestic Policy Council, described the effort as one that would help the next generation “grow into resilient, curious, and moral leaders, inspired by American and Western values.”
The compact was first proposed to 9 universities : Vanderbilt University, Dartmouth College, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Arizona, Brown University and the University of Virginia. It was later expanded to 12— including Arizona State University, the University of Kansas and Washington University in St. Louis— and then offered broadly to all universities.
The letter to the universities indicated that those who signed the compact would get “multiple positive benefits,” including “substantial and meaningful federal grants.” It further stated that institutions of higher education were “free to develop models and values” other than those in the memo, but only if they “give up all federal funding streams.” Compliance with the agreement would be reviewed by the Justice department, and institutions who sign on and violate the norms would “lose access to the benefits of this agreement.”
Mr. Trump strongly encouraged universities to take the deal.
“Throughout most of our History, America’s Colleges and Universities have been a Great Strategic Asset of the United States. Tragically, however, much of Higher Education has lost its way, and is now corrupting our Youth and Society with WOKE, SOCIALIST, and ANTI-AMERICAN Ideology that serves as justification for discriminatory practices by Universities that are Unconstitutional and Unlawful (sic),” he wrote on Truth Social.
“Our Nation’s Great Institutions will once again prioritize Merit and Hard Work before “group identity,” resulting in tremendous new Research and Opportunity to benefit all Americans, and Equality being honored in American Businesses, Courts, and Culture,” he claimed.
The universities were given an October 20 deadline for responses, while the White House letter requested a signed agreement by November 21. All except two universities rejected the proposal before this date. Vanderbilt expressed reservations, and the UT Austin system was still mulling over compact after the deadline had passed. This was even as the Chairman of the UT Board of Regents had called it an “honour” when UT Austin was named in the initial list.
University of Virginia, MIT, Brown, UPenn and USC were among the first to reject the compact. MIT was the first, with President Sally Kornbluth saying in an October 10 letter to Ms. McMahon that the document “includes principles with which we disagree, including those that would restrict freedom of expression and our independence as an institution.”
New College of Florida became the first to sign on to the compact according to a report dated October 27. The little Sarasota Bay liberal arts college had been considered progressive and experimental before it was taken over by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in 2023. A Republican, Mr Santis is said to have led a transformation of the college into a conservative institution, modelled after Hillsdale, a Michigan conservative college which does not take government funds and teaches the classics.
Valley Forge Military College volunteered the next day, while an expression of interest was offered by Grand Canyon University, a Christian school whose $37 million federal fine for misrepresenting graduate tuition price was waived by Trump in May.
Meanwhile, Michael Crow, the outspoken longtime leader of Arizona State University, was miffed he hadn’t been approached for the compact. Notably, sister institution University of Arizona had been asked to sign on.
The following conditions were laid down in a ten point memo, with fulfillment required for preferential funding:
Universities must ensure that admissions and financial support services disregard race and sex when admitting students and hiring staff and faculty.
They must publicly share anonymised admissions data, including GPA and test scores, broken down by race, national origin and sex.
All applicants to universities are required to take a standardised test, such as the SAT, before they can be admitted.
International students must not make up more than 15% of undergraduate enrolments. They must be screened for support of American and Western values
Universities must share all known information about foreign students with federal agencies
Universities must ensure they remain a “vibrant marketplace of ideas on campus” with no dominant political ideology, and promote viewpoint diversity among students, faculty, and staff
They must abolish departments which “purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas”.
Universities are required to freeze tuition fees for five years, reduce administrative costs and publicly share graduate earnings by programme.
The institutions with endowments exceeding $2m per undergraduate student should waive tuition fees for students enrolled in “hard science” programmes.
They must limit students from any single country to 5%
They must address grade inflation across courses
Media reports in January have indicated that a second version of the Compact may be in the works, potentially with new input from people both within and outside universities.
Other responses
California governor Gavin Newsom objected strongly to the plan in comments to the media, and indicated that he would withdraw state funds from any California university that “signs this radical agreement.”
“California will not bankroll schools that sell out their students, professors, researchers and surrender academic freedom,” he said.
In an email response, James H. Finkelstein, Professor Emeritus of Public Policy at George Mason University, called the compact “one of the most troubling developments I’ve seen in my forty years studying higher education governance.”
“It essentially asks universities to trade their autonomy for federal favor—accepting oversight of curriculum, hiring, and governance practices in exchange for funding. This runs counter to the First Amendment’s protection of academic freedom and the long-standing constitutional principle that the federal government cannot condition funding on the surrender of fundamental rights.”
David Ramadan, who describes himself as a “lifelong conservative, a former Republican legislator and now a professor at George Mason University,” noted in an opinion piece for USA Today that this initiative counted not as engagement but as coercion —“an attempt to remake higher education through executive fiat and financial threat.”
“For decades, conservatives have championed limited federal government, local control and the protection of free speech. This proposal runs afoul of all three,” he writes.
First Amendment scholar and former Columbia President Lee Bolinger said in a comment to media that “no self-respecting university could ever accept something like this.” Meanwhile, Adam Kissel, a visiting fellow at the Center for Education Policy at conservative think tank Heritage Foundation, told The Washington Post that “the administration’s concerns are aligned with those of many Americans, legislators and education leaders,” highlighting that complying with civil rights requirements and rejection of DEI hiring were the right ideas.
More than a hundred campuses protested on November 7, 2025, against what they described as the Trump administration’s political encroachment into higher education. Students, faculty and unions such as the American Association of University Professors and Higher Education Labor United protested under the banner of Students Rise Up. This is expected to be one of a rolling series of protests leading up to student and worker strikes in May 2026 and a general strike in 2028.
Protestors also gathered outside the New York city headquarters of investment firm Apollo Global Management, whose CEO Marc Rowan is the alleged architect of the compact, and also a major Trump donor. They argued that billionaires should not dictate campus curricula. Apollo Global Management also reportedly owns a big stake in the for-profit University of Phoenix since 2017.
Institutional neutrality
Some universities had sought to pre-empt action by adopting a stance of institutional neutrality as Mr. Trump’s second term started. Bloomberg reported that, in February, a few weeks after Mr. Trump’s inauguration, Vanderbilt and Washington University St. Louis — both invited to sign the compact — adopted a joint Statement of Principles making “institutional neutrality” a cornerstone value. Vanderbilt Chancellor Daniel Diermeier said of the compact, “When you read it carefully, you see references to the WashU and Vanderbilt principles that we worked on.” The compact also reportedly quotes Dartmouth President Sian Beilock on the subject of institutional neutrality.
Cracking under the pressure
University administrations have been negotiating with the White House to end the blockade of funds and federal action against them, and some have reached a compromise.
In July 2025, Brown struck a $50 million deal. It is expected to pay this money over 10 years to improve Rhode Island’s workforce development programmes. Further it is also to commit to supporting the local Jewish community, foster research and education about Israel, and a institute robust Program in Judaic Studies. Another condition is that it should restrict its acknowledgement of trans students. The deal bans Brown University from using a proxy for racial admissions, such as personal statements or diversity narratives. The University also agreed to a comprehensive audit of data on the race, grades and test scores of applicants and admitted students.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration will reinstate $50m in unpaid federal grant costs as part of the deal.
Brown did obtain a couple of concessions. A clause in the deal highlights that the administration can’t dictate curriculum or content of academic speech. The University also managed to dodge an independent monitor being appointed to oversee compliance, unlike Columbia.
On July 23, Columbia, which receives $1.3 billion in federal funding, agreed to a $200 million fine, paid in three instalments over three years, to settle its dispute with the Trump administration. Columbia will also pay $21 million to settle investigations brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Trump had cancelled $400 million in research funding to the university alleging failure to take action against anti-Semitism. A few weeks later, the administration froze all of the university’s remaining funding from the National Institutes of Health, about $700m in total, and threatened the school’s accreditation.
The deal settles more than a half-dozen open civil rights investigations into the university. Compliance will be monitored by an independent monitor agreed to by both sides and paid for by Columbia— Bart M. Schwartz, co-founder and chairman of the crisis consulting firm Guidepost Solutions and a former chief of the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. The monitor is expected to report to the government on its progress every six months.
“Columbia’s reforms are a road map for elite universities that wish to regain the confidence of the American public by renewing their commitment to truth-seeking, merit and civil debate,” Ms. McMahon said.
University of Pennsylvania and Wagner college both entered agreements with the government pertaining to Title IX, agreeing to not let transwomen participate in women’s sports or enter female-only facilities such as showers and locker-rooms.
The University of Virginia was reportedly the first public university to arrive at a deal with the Trump administration in October 2025. According to the conditions of the deal, the Justice Department will end its probe into the university, while the university will “not engage in unlawful racial discrimination in its university programming, admissions, hiring or other activities.” UVA will also share information with the DOJ on a quarterly basis till 2028.
On November 7, 2025, the White House announced a settlement with Cornell, where it will pay a $30 million penalty to the US, payable over three years. The agreement also includes a clause saying that Cornell will invest $30 million in research programmes that directly benefit U.S. farmers, payable in equal installments over three years
The deal closes pending Title VI and Title IX investigations into the university, except for Title VI investigations into Cornell’s employment practices. The deal, which reinstates all $250 million of funds cut from Cornell, has similar clauses about complying with civil rights laws and protecting students from anti-Semitism.
The latest settlement has been with Northwestern University, Illinois, with $790 million in federal funds being restored to the university. The deal, where Northwestern will pay $75 million to the U.S Treasury over 3 years, was announced on November 28, closing all government investigations into the school. Northwestern President Henry Bienen said that the school retained full academic freedom, including over decisions pertaining to hiring of faculty, admissions, curriculum and research.
The university cited several initiatives to combat anti-Semitism over the last years, including new training requirements, expanded reporting systems and greater support for Jewish students, and also said it will comply with Title IX rules. However, the settlement does not impose any restrictions on the transgender student community. It does terminate the Deering Meadow Agreement of April 29, 2024, which emerged after encampment protests in support of Palestine, and saw the University accepting certain conditions with regard to free speech and disinvestment from Israeli institutions.
As per the agreement, Northwestern will establish a Special Committee of the University’s Board of Trustees to oversee compliance.
Although Harvard and the White House were reportedly close to a deal, no announcement has been made so far. Harvard remains the only university which has taken the administration to court, although some universities have filed amicus briefs supporting its lawsuits. A report dated January 26, 2026, indicated that Yale and 47 other universities filed an amicus brief supporting Harvard’s lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security for revoking its ability to host international students.
Simon Marginson, Professor of Higher Education at University of Bristol and University of Oxford says that the requirement that universities sign a compact “where they lose a lot of autonomy.. this all seems very un-American to the universities. It’s not how they do things.”
(Note: This article is current as of January 30, 2026)
