Universities Are Standing Up to Trump; The New York Times, October 17, 2025

Alan Blinder, The New York Times ; Universities Are Standing Up to Trump

"For months, his campaign faced only sporadic resistance. But over the last week, Brown University, M.I.T., the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Southern California have all rebuffed the White House’s push to give preferential funding treatment to schools that show fealty to Mr. Trump’s agenda.

Brown’s decision, in particular, is a case study of how the White House may have misjudged its own strength and academia’s nerve, especially once one of Mr. Trump’s top aides said that the nine schools initially chosen to consider the proposal were “good actors,” or could be...

Previously, Harvard had been the only school to defy the Trump administration so openly, refusing a list of demands intrusive enough that even some of the university’s critics said the school had no feasible choice but to balk. Harvard sued soon after and won a crucial ruling last month.

The schools that have rejected the government’s compact may very well be risking Washington’s wrath since Mr. Trump has proved willing to attack the federal funding of schools that his administration disfavors. But the compact represents both an effort to immunize the administration’s efforts from court challenges and to take its ambitions well beyond a single school.

The demands also reach farther, with conditions that include accepting “that academic freedom is not absolute” and pledging to potentially shut down “institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle and even spark violence against conservative ideas.”"