Dartmouth College has rejected a compact with the Trump administration, saying it will not trade academic freedom for preferential access to federal funding. The college had until Monday to make its decision.
“I do not believe that the involvement of the government through a compact—whether it is a Republican- or Democratic-led White House—is the right way to focus America’s leading colleges and universities on their teaching and research mission,” Dartmouth President Sian Beilock said in a statement released Saturday.
She told the administration she welcomes “further engagement around how we can (a) enhance the long-standing partnership between the federal government and this country’s leading research universities and (b) ensure that higher education stays focused on academic excellence.”
Dartmouth was one of nine colleges and universities asked to sign the White House’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.” The compact offered schools preferential access to federal funding in exchange for adopting several Trump administration policies.
Under the agreement, Dartmouth would have had to apply the Trump administration’s definition of gender to campus bathrooms, locker rooms and women’s sports teams. It would have been required to stop considering race, gender and a wide range of student demographics in its admissions process. The compact also required schools to limit international student admissions.
Nearly 500 Dartmouth faculty and graduate students signed a petition urging Beilock to reject the compact, according to the Valley News.
In her statement rejecting the compact, Belilock said universities “have a responsibility to set our own academic and institutional policies, guided by our mission and values, our commitment to free expression, and our obligations under the law.”
“Staying true to this responsibility is what will help American higher education build bipartisan public trust and continue to uphold its place as the envy of the world.”
Several other schools announced last week they were rejecting the compact, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brown University, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Southern California.
