Thoughts from Actual Academics on a Compact Aimed at America’s Universities
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Last week we alerted you that UVA is one of nine universities singled out by the Trump Administration as “receptive” to a compact that would trade university independence for vague financial promises.
Since then, scholars and media alike have sounded alarms. This week, we’re highlighting the sharp legal and practical critiques from academics explaining why the Compact is illegal, unworkable, and dangerous for higher education.
Many of our supporters have asked us to take a deep dive into the Compact this week, so our message this week is longer than usual. Don’t have time to read a long message? No problem! Here’s a quick summary of the key points this week:
- The Compact is illegal, unworkable, and dangerous. It trades institutional independence for vague promises and political control.
- Signing means permanent obeisance. Legal scholars warn the Compact would bind UVA to indefinite federal leverage with no clear way out.
- Jefferson’s vision demands intellectual independence. The Compact imposes political dictates—the very threat Jefferson built UVA to resist.
- Virginia’s General Assembly stands firmly opposed. Legislative leaders warned of “significant consequences” if UVA signs and called the Compact an unprecedented federal intrusion.
- Real viewpoint diversity already thrives at UVA. The Compact’s simplistic “balance” mandate shows profound ignorance of how academic inquiry works.
- This moment calls for courage, not committees. Mahoney’s working group and survey dodge leadership. Jefferson didn’t poll; he led.
- The Compact is unconstitutional. It conditions federal benefits on speech and academic content—violating the First Amendment.
- UVA must lead, not follow. All eyes are on us. The right answer is clear: No.
Take Action: Click here to tell Interim President Mahoney and Rector Sheridan to reject the Compact immediately.
When the Cost is Permanent Obeisance, no Benefit Can Outweigh It
The Compact seeks to do by group capitulation what courts have thus far ruled the Trump Administration cannot do legally. Signing the Compact would shackle UVA to indefinite political control. As Joseph Fishkin, professor at UCLA Law School, explains:
“I want to situate this “compact” in this administration’s overall approach to law. That approach is to try to sideline law itself—its regularity, predictability, transparency, and treating likes alike—and replace the law with ‘the deal’....an agreement you and I sign that binds you to do what I want, grants me new leverage over you to demand more in the future, and does very little to bind me. That is what this compact is. It’s an offer all universities must refuse…”
UVA Professor of History Brian Owensby puts it even more starkly:
“Signing the document will cede the university’s independence to government control. No administration will feel it can push back or pursue legal remedies…. The university will be caught in a trap of permanent obeisance. Once the mechanism is in place, there will be no obvious way to go back without ruinous consequences.”
Whether viewed as a promise of additional federal funding or as a suggestion to forgo all federal funding to retain autonomy, no financial calculus can justify permanently surrendering the University’s independence.
Again, from UVA’s Owensby:
“Against this power, what will the University do in the face of a government demanding (or even suggesting) changes in curriculum to question the validity of climate science, or proposing that research into the psychological, scientific, or cultural bases of gender be put aside, or insisting that there be a US history class that tells a triumphal story of the country? Higher education has a long history of thinking through and responding to its own challenges. This time is no different.”
UVA must say “no.”
Jefferson’s University Stands for Intellectual Independence
Thomas Jefferson founded UVA to be different—a university “based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind,” where students could “follow truth wherever it may lead.” He built UVA to be free from outside control, rejecting religious governance and hand-picking faculty from Europe to shield the institution from sectarian and political interference.
The Compact does exactly what Jefferson feared: it replaces academic judgment with political dictates. It threatens to use federal research funds, student loans, and visa approvals to coerce universities into conforming to a partisan agenda.
The General Assembly Says UVA Is Not for Sale.
The urgency of rejecting the Compact is shared well beyond the academic community. On October 7, 2025, leaders of the Virginia General Assembly sent a forceful letter to President Mahoney and Rector Sheridan making clear their “unequivocal opposition” to the Compact and warning of “significant consequences in future Virginia budget cycles” should UVA sign it. They described the Compact as “an unprecedented federal intrusion into institutional autonomy and academic freedom,” noting that it follows the Trump Administration’s extortionate tactics in forcing the resignation of President Ryan by threatening hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding.
Meanwhile, Senate leadership explicitly warned that if UVA signs the Compact, the General Assembly will ensure that the Commonwealth does not subsidize a university that has ceded its independence to federal political control. The legislators emphasized that the Compact’s contradictory provisions would subject UVA to arbitrary political enforcement and legal peril. They called on the University to “immediately cease all deliberations” regarding the Compact and to notify the Administration in writing that UVA will not sign.
Legislators in the General Assembly are clear: UVA must say “no.”
Viewpoint Diversity: How It Actually Works
From its founding, UVA has fostered diverse viewpoints and robust debate. This is evident in UVA’s consistently high FIRE rankings, including #1 in 2024.
The Compact’s clumsy attempt to “balance” two oversimplified viewpoints through outside enforcement shows a deep misunderstanding of how academic inquiry and student learning actually work.
Here are a couple of real-life descriptions from a couple of our own gifted faculty.
Janet Spittler who teaches New Testament and Early Christian Studies in our Department of Religious Studies shared this:
“[L]et’s say… that we did have a clear idea of a “conservative New Testament scholar” or a “liberal New Testament scholar”—how would we go about hiring one or the other? Here’s where the real problem—and the fundamental misunderstanding of what academic research really is—surfaces. To hire a “liberal” or “conservative” New Testament scholar would be to hire someone based on the conclusions they reach, and not the research they conduct. We never hire faculty members based on the conclusions we expect them to reach. We hire based on the quality of the research. In my field, that means expertise in ancient languages, depth of knowledge in both ancient literature and the history of scholarship, acumen in interpretation, etc.; these are the skills I learned in graduate school and that I continue to hone. The quality of the research also depends on the questions a researcher asks—and here is where it might make sense for an academic department to consider diverse methodologies when proposing new hires. But high-quality research is simply not produced in situations where the full range of possible conclusions is constrained by anything, above all ideology. The best research is produced when well-trained and highly skilled researchers raise significant questions and follow the evidence wherever it leads.
When James Madison, writing to Edward Everett, rejected the notion of hiring “professors of divinity” at the University of Virginia, he wrote: “A University with Sectarian professorships, becomes of course, a Sectarian Monopoly: with professorships of rival sects, it would be an arena of Theological Gladiators.” In essence, Madison feared exactly what I fear this “compact” is calling for: a university where faculty are hired to represent, and even fight for, particular viewpoints. But this is not how good research is done, it is not how knowledge is increased, it is not how an educated citizenry is produced.”
Professor Owensby offers this story from his own research in Latin American history and years of classroom teaching at UVA:
“I’ll note that the Compact’s supposition that people like me have a specific ideological agenda when going into the classroom or approaching sources simply misunderstands. I am motivated by new questions rather than by easy answers, for it is in the questions that we push forward in trying to make sense of our own lives in historical context. As we all know from experience, especially keenly these days, this is no mean feat.
I have taught modern Latin America. That course demands a confrontation with the role the U.S. has played in Latin American from the 19th- to the 20th centuries. The idea has never been to point fingers but to help my students understand how that entanglement has influenced historical developments. This field of inquiry has long been trapped inside a failure/success model, in which the U.S. generally features as the marker of success and Latin America as the marker of failure. This does little more than confirm stereotypes and blind students to anything other than what they have been taught to expect. My goal has always been to look beyond such facile categories to deeper questions of how societies work. The truth is not reached by saying “it’s complicated” but by engaging the complications in a way that allows new perspectives and poses questions about how people sought to live together, even in the hardest circumstances.”
Spittler’s and Owensby’s stories from the humanities and social sciences are just two of an endless number which explain how it is that the casual critic and especially an ideologically driven one fails to understand why we have colleges and universities and what we should want them to be doing.
UVA’s Media Studies Professor Siva Vaidhyanathan has written more extensively about this in his article just published in the New Republic.
Leaders Don’t Outsource Courage
Last week, Interim President Paul Mahoney announced a “working group” to advise him on how UVA should respond to the Trump Administration’s invitation to sign the so-called Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education. In an email, Mahoney and Rector Rachel Sheridan said the group would examine the Compact’s financial, legal, and mission implications.
They also circulated a two-question survey to students, faculty, and staff. Notably, the survey is not anonymous, and is not open to alumni, parents, or other community members:
1. “Are there aspects of the ‘Compact’ that you support?”
2. “Are there aspects of the ‘Compact’ that you oppose?”
This isn’t a moment for simplistic surveys or committee deliberations. It’s a moment for leadership. The question of whether UVA should sign doesn’t require a working group. It requires a spine—ideally a spine stiffened in collaboration with the other 8 target schools who all say in unison: we will not capitulate to unworkable demands.
UVA exists to teach and learn, to create new knowledge, to benefit the nation and world by doing research the federal government has sought and supported through grants. The University prepares young adults from the United States and across the world for not just careers but also for lifelong learning and engaged citizenship. Let the University do that work without political interference.
“No” is a Complete Sentence.
The Compact violates the spirit, and quite likely the letter, of the Constitution. Courts have already held that administrations cannot arbitrarily revoke grants or visas because of universities’ speech or values. For those of you who are interested in a more in-depth explanation of the ways in which the Compact violates First Amendment protections, friends of Wahoos4UVA have put together a preliminary legal analysis of the Compact. You can read it here:
Additionally, First Amendment attorney and Wahoos4 UVA Advisory Council member Richard Marks argues that the Trump Administration is using antisemitism investigations as a pretext to impose unconstitutional political controls on universities through the Compact. He warns it would undermine academic freedom, distort the marketplace of ideas, and violate the First Amendment: https://substack.com/home/post/p-172621057
Strong University leaders would recognize the dangers of signing the Compact and immediately and unequivocally say NO.
UVA Must Lead, Not Follow
As Jefferson wrote in 1821, “The University of Virginia will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead.”
Right now, UVA is being watched by students, faculty, staff, alumni, legislators, and other universities across the nation. Will we lead, as Jefferson intended, or will we cower and capitulate?
Take Action: Tell UVA Leadership to Say “NO” — Right Now
UVA doesn’t need a working group or a survey to know what’s right. It needs leadership. Today, take one minute to tell Interim President Paul Mahoney and Rector Rachel Sheridan to reject the Trump Administration’s Compact, immediately and unequivocally.
With resolve,
Ann Brown (College ’74, Law ’77) and Chris Ford (Engineering ’87)
Co-Chairs, Wahoos4UVA
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