[HN Gopher] Regarding the Compact
___________________________________________________________________
Regarding the Compact
Author : ChrisArchitect
Score : 140 points
Date : 2025-10-10 16:49 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (president.mit.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (president.mit.edu)
| smrtinsert wrote:
| Is there any precedent in US history for what the administration
| is asking of the nations top universities? Incredible they have
| to deal with this.
| hexis wrote:
| Yes, the federal government of the United States has always
| attached conditions to federal funding.
| laidoffamazon wrote:
| Not like this, no, and it has never shaken down schools like
| it has at Columbia or Harvard.
|
| As much as I despise these institutions and their undergrads
| this does nothing to punish them and everything to increase
| the power of this current corrupt executive.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Why specifically the undergrads?
| laidoffamazon wrote:
| They hate the rest of us that didn't get into elite
| schools and are permanent members of the upper caste of
| this country. Graduate school admission is more purely
| meritocratic on if you can do research but even that
| isn't great.
| fedsocpuppet wrote:
| Is this like a humiliation fetish at this point? This is
| seriously unhealthy. We don't hate our friends that
| didn't a go to an eLiTe school because we're not
| sociopaths. Not sure why I'm even trying since you seem
| pretty dead set on this, but it's just a lot easier to go
| through life without made up enemies.
| laidoffamazon wrote:
| People that go to elite undergrads think the rest of us
| are a lower inferior caste. I don't know how that's even
| something you can deny. You've clearly expended a lot of
| effort to segregate yourself from the likes of people
| like me or people that go to SJSU because we don't have
| "merit" or "potential"
| fedsocpuppet wrote:
| I can deny it because it's obvious bullshit lol. I don't
| think that way and neither does anybody I know from MIT
| think that way. This is reality versus your imagination.
| If there's anyone I look down on it's my classmates who
| could've worked anywhere and still went to palantir...
|
| I can't claim 100% aren't assholes, but the vast majority
| realize the luck and arbitrary nature of it. Are you
| going to be stuck in decision day sadness mode for the
| rest of your life? Life is too short
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Dear Colleague letter.
| magnio wrote:
| While the current climate is not comparable, I find the actions
| and general attitude of the current US government similar to
| that during the McCarthy era.
|
| Which led me to this very interesting article from 1965:
| https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1965/6/17/the-university-...
|
| In it, the author described the attacks on specific personnels
| and public villainification of Harvard. More tellingly though,
| the author wrote the article for students in the 60s, who,
| growing up a mere decade after, most likely considered the
| events "an aberration which could not have lasted", and that,
| "the whole [McCarthy] period has an air of unreality".
|
| Those who did not know history are bound to repeat it.
| Unfortunately, no amount of textbooks and historical resources
| seems to be sufficient to impart lessons to subsequent
| generations, and we are bound to repeat it after a few cycles.
| DrewADesign wrote:
| Assuming lack of knowledge is the reason authoritarian
| tendencies show up periodically dismisses the fact that a lot
| of people think it's a good thing. There were neo nazis right
| after wwii. They didn't forget -- they wanted it.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Yeah that worries me. The Nazi party ended on paper, the
| flags were taken down, but there is no military defeat that
| really changes the minds of the losing faction. They just
| went covert, stopped saying the quiet part, and waited.
| esseph wrote:
| We won the war but never learned as a group how to handle
| the ideological problems.
| DrewADesign wrote:
| That feels oversimplified. A lot of people would think
| people that oppose Nazis are the ones with the
| ideological problems. Who defines what a problem is in
| our society? The majority or some skewing of it. This is
| the problem that politics is supposed to solve, and then
| the problem that the electoral college was supposed to
| safeguard against. How do we avoid the tyranny of a
| demented majority? Aligning to a specific moral code? ...
| like a theocracy? I can't think of any way that doesn't
| immediately instill the tyranny of a minority in its
| place.
|
| We in the US have been very arrogant in assuming we've
| found the solution to all this when all it took was a few
| decades -- a flash-in-the-pan, really -- of consistent,
| strategic bad faith by the political rulers to undermine
| the whole thing.
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| Yes, the Biden Administration's promulgation of a Title IX
| interpretation that, among other things, would have compelled
| certain kinds of speech:
|
| https://speechfirst.org/case/title-ix/
|
| One example of many: it would have been a punishable offense to
| refuse to use someone's preferred pronouns.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Are you injured if you can't misgender someone?
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| Compelled speech is a bright line the U.S. has, so far,
| managed not to cross. We should be trying as hard as we can
| not to cross that line.
|
| You may not see the harm in _this_ particular instance, but
| establishing "we'll just force them to say it and punish
| them if they don't" as a tool in any government's toolbox
| is a very, very bad idea.
| kjksf wrote:
| Yes, to the extent that any violation of constitution
| injures me.
|
| Forcing me to say things I don't want to say under threat
| of punishment violates first amendment. It's been litigated
| and so concluded.
|
| The fact that it's the 1st amendment indicates that
| founding fathers thought that it is indeed the greatest
| injury us government can inflict on us citizens.
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> The fact that it 's the 1st amendment indicates that
| founding fathers thought that it is indeed the greatest
| injury us government can inflict on us citizens._
|
| By that argument the greatest injury that they were
| addressing was a weak central government that couldn't
| provide for the security and financing of the state. It's
| literally called the first _amendment_ because the Bill
| of Rights was an addendum to the constitution.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| Do you think that, to use this site's language, it would
| be a 1A violation to create a rule under which
|
| > students can be reported for merely expressing their
| opinions about controversial political and social issues
| of the day or even if they prefer not to express support
| for _American political allies and wars they may not
| support_
| boplicity wrote:
| Remember, fascism is not an ideology or philosophical idea. It is
| a system of government. Gaining control of academia is a core
| part of this system. I applaud MIT for standing up to this.
|
| I hope the other universities involved also resist. We'll see.
| zamadatix wrote:
| > I hope the other universities involved also refuse to resist
|
| I think you may have meant "refuse and resist" (or something
| similar) in your comment, based on the first half.
| boplicity wrote:
| Sorry! Fixed!
| tencentshill wrote:
| The nine universities include:
|
| Vanderbilt University
|
| Dartmouth College
|
| the University of Pennsylvania
|
| the University of Southern California
|
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology
|
| the University of Texas at Austin
|
| the University of Arizona
|
| Brown University
|
| the University of Virginia
| laidoffamazon wrote:
| I didn't realize UA was here - even UVA and UT as more
| egalitarian institutions are a weird set to include.
| etchalon wrote:
| UT is, for better or worse, still in Texas. And Texas has
| yet to discover a Trump/MAGA initiative it doesn't embrace.
| runako wrote:
| This is a motley list. I am guessing the criteria for
| inclusion was an administration staffer (or their offspring)
| was not able to secure admission.
| bee_rider wrote:
| For anyone confused like me, a definition of motley is
| "Having elements of great variety or incongruity;
| heterogeneous."
|
| I think a lot of the neural connections to the word motley
| come from the expression "motley crew" which has fairly
| negative connotations. But the truth of the matter is, this
| is just a very varied group of schools; some great schools
| on the list. I won't say any of the schools are not great,
| because of course some alum will come along and say
| "actually we had a great department for some niche
| computational thing" and I'll be embarrassed to not have
| known that.
| runako wrote:
| I meant it in the sense of heterogeneous.
|
| The list includes public & private institutions across a
| variety of states and size ranges. It singles out
| particular institutions in state university systems (e.g.
| University of Texas at Austin but not Texas A&M or
| University of Texas at El Paso). Half the list is in the
| northeast, while the midwest and Pacific Northwest are
| not represented. It's 9 institutions, not 10.
|
| It's just an odd list.
| TheCondor wrote:
| That's a very favorable interpretation.
|
| It looks an awful lot like a sampling designed to identify
| who the "enemies" are.
| justin66 wrote:
| I was thinking it was a rare display of caution on the
| part of otherwise careless idiots. (or maybe we just got
| lucky) They aren't fucking with any of the universities
| responsible for managing national laboratories.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Interesting. I first heard about this from Newsom's statement
| that any university that signed it would lose California
| education funds instantly, but the only California university
| on it is the private USC. Thought for sure that at least UC
| Berkeley, UCLA, and Stanford would be on it, but I guess not.
| Maybe they chose USC because it seems to have a bit more of a
| conservative bent than most California schools.
| p4ul wrote:
| Yeah, I am very curious to see the responses from other
| institutions. The University of Texas (Austin) said they were
| "honored" to have received the compact.[1] That is obviously
| very concerning.
|
| [1] https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-white-house-sent-
| its-c...
| kjksf wrote:
| Given that leftists have gained control of academia, are
| democrats fascists?
|
| My claim of "leftists control academia" is based on data on
| political affiliation / donations by staff at major
| universities which is 80-90% democrats.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Pretty massive difference between "the federal government is
| using its influence to try to compel academia into bending
| the knee to it and it's fascistic methods of operating" and
| "most academics aren't in favor of the party that still
| doesn't believe in vaccines, hates them or their colleagues
| for having the wrong skin color and doesn't see any value in
| the liberal arts".
| svat wrote:
| Context (as I didn't know about this earlier):
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_for_Academic_Excellenc...
| (current version:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Compact_for_Acade...).
|
| I liked the _"These values and other MIT practices meet or exceed
| many standards outlined in the document you sent"_ line.
| etchalon wrote:
| What a ridiculous document.
| cs702 wrote:
| > The document also includes principles with which we disagree,
| including those that would restrict freedom of expression and our
| independence as an institution. And fundamentally, the premise of
| the document is inconsistent with our core belief that scientific
| funding should be based on scientific merit alone.
|
| > In our view, America's leadership in science and innovation
| depends on independent thinking and open competition for
| excellence. In that free marketplace of ideas, the people of MIT
| gladly compete with the very best, without preferences.
| Therefore, with respect, we cannot support the proposed approach
| to addressing the issues facing higher education.
| runako wrote:
| In a way, the overreach in the compact made this an obvious
| (though not easy) decision.
|
| Obviously, an independent university cannot agree to government-
| mandated pricing or censorship of faculty members. Similarly,
| government intrusion into grading practices and proactively
| threatening to use "lawful force" against minors are immediately
| off the table.
|
| That's all aside from the practicality of ongoing assessment,
| which would likely require something akin to commissars to
| monitor speech and discussions around grading.
|
| The universities are fortunate the administration is not more
| subtle.
| wavemode wrote:
| > threatening to use "lawful force" against minors
|
| What's the context here?
| runako wrote:
| The text of the Compact:
|
| > Signatories commit to using lawful force if necessary to
| prevent these violations and to swift, serious, and
| consistent sanctions for those who commit them.
|
| Many students enter college as minors, so this is asking
| colleges to commit to using force against minors while only
| talking about hypothetical events.
| dem_bones wrote:
| What's wrong with that? They're still covered by the law.
| runako wrote:
| I'll make it simple in a few steps:
|
| 1. Many people have an aversion to harming children. This
| aversion is not universally shared, but it is a very
| common stance nonetheless. Children, especially, tend to
| have an aversion to being harmed.
|
| 2. Universities need to recruit children to leave their
| families and be governed by them (e.g. housing, food,
| etc.).
|
| 3. Parents of children are required to get approval for
| those children to go to the universities, so that the
| universities can function.
|
| 4. It is harder to recruit children to a university that
| has agreed that in vague circumstances it is ready to
| harm them. Note here that everyone already knows that
| there are sanctions for breaking the law, and that the
| university is advertising that it is willing to go above
| and beyond normal law enforcement procedures in hurting
| children.
|
| Does that clarify?
| dem_bones_ wrote:
| Did you read the rest of the paragraph prior to the
| sentence you quoted? Any use of lawful force has to be
| justified by prevention of the violations described thus:
|
| > _Signatories acknowledge that the freedom to debate
| requires conditions of civility. Civility includes
| protections against institutional punishment or
| individual harassment for one's views. Universities shall
| neither support nor permit a heckler's veto through, for
| example, disruptions, violence, intimidation, or
| vandalism. Universities shall be responsible for ensuring
| that they do not knowingly: (1) permit actions by the
| university, university employees, university students, or
| individuals external to the university community to delay
| or disrupt class instruction or disrupt libraries or
| other traditional study locations; (2) allow
| demonstrators to heckle or accost individual students or
| groups of students; or (3) allow obstruction of access to
| parts of campus based on students' race, ethnicity,
| nationality, or religion._
|
| Misbehaving children need to dealt with too, within the
| bounds of what is allowed by law. Otherwise, what, you
| want a loophole for them to get away with all of the
| above?
| runako wrote:
| Yes, I read that. As you said, the law is still operant.
| This is not about normal law enforcement, this is about
| willingness to be more aggressive than the police
| normally would.
|
| > to delay or disrupt class instruction or disrupt
| libraries or other traditional study locations
|
| No, I do not think that it is reasonable for a child to
| be beaten or shot because someone delayed a class
| somewhere on campus (note that this does not even
| indicate that the harmed student must have been part of
| the demonstration).
|
| > allow demonstrators to heckle or accost individual
| students
|
| I do not think this is generally enforceable outside of a
| police state. And no, I do not consider it reasonable for
| a child to be beaten or shot because a person was
| "heckled" somewhere on campus.
|
| I am using "beaten or shot" because that's always a
| likely event when "lawful force" is exercised in America.
|
| > you want a loophole for them to get away with all of
| the above
|
| No, I want to fall back on our existing laws, which have
| the benefit of decades/centuries of precedent, and which
| are enforced in more transparent fora.
| kjksf wrote:
| > an independent university
|
| MIT is taking (lots of) money from federal government. That
| makes them dependent on the government and government is within
| its right to attach strings to the money.
|
| MIT is free to not do what the government wants but then
| government is free to stop giving them (our) money.
|
| Furthermore, MIT, like any other organization, must obey state
| and federal laws.
|
| For example, there's a law that you cannot discriminate in
| hiring based on sex or religion. If IBM, MIT or a barber shop
| discriminates it's the role of the government to enforce the
| law and make them stop. The easy way is sending them a letter
| and asking. The hard way is to sue them in federal court.
| runako wrote:
| I mean, you're obviously right about this all. Which is why
| it's an easy decision. MIT chooses independence and so cannot
| agree to these terms.
|
| Separately, there is the question of whether it is in the
| best interest of the US to part ways with organizations such
| as MIT.
|
| > MIT is taking (lots of) money from federal government
|
| Surely nobody is naive enough to think the federal government
| is giving money to institutions like MIT with no expectation
| of reciprocal benefit?
|
| MIT is (was?) full of DoD asset tags to indicate which
| equipment was paid for by DoD grants. So another way of
| stating your point is the federal government is investing in
| programs at MIT to shape which basic research gets done so
| that it aligns with the best interest of the United States.
|
| (A prior iteration of conservativism would have recognized
| outsourcing to MIT as a capital-light way of accomplishing a
| set of policy goals. The alternative being to spin up the
| whole apparatus in-house without cost sharing. Left to their
| own devices, engineering students are not likely to discover
| and research problems that are immediately germane to DoD.)
|
| It is possible to be independent while also accepting grants
| from the USG. There's no contradiction there. The point of
| independence is that the Institute gets to determine how it
| runs its affairs. This Compact is an attempt to move that
| decision-making process to the White House. Maintaining
| independence in this environment therefore means abandoning
| federal research funding.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > MIT is taking (lots of) money from federal government. That
| makes them dependent on the government and government is
| within its right to attach strings to the money.
|
| Governments do not have rights (except in a metaphorical
| sense in relations with other governments, which doesn't
| apply here), so it is impossible for a government to be
| "within its rights" when interacting with an entity to
| subject to its governance.
|
| It _may_ be within legal exercise of its _powers_ , but that
| is a very a very different thing than rights, and in any case
| there is a very good argument that the compact is not only
| unlawful as an exercise of government power, but that
| accepting and complying with it would require universities to
| act in conflict with existing federal civil rights laws which
| provide for private causes of actions against perpetrators.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > In a way, the overreach in the compact made this an obvious
| (though not easy) decision.
|
| If you have morals but lack the conviction to stand by them, do
| you really have morals?
| runako wrote:
| Unsure what you mean. Obviously MIT is standing on their
| conviction. That doesn't make it an easy thing to do!
| pastel8739 wrote:
| It's quite possible that an organization has multiple morals,
| and standing by one moral might feasibly compromise another
| ---choosing which of these morals to violate might be
| difficult.
| periodjet wrote:
| This seems like a reasonable response by MIT. I'm struggling to
| understand where the core disagreement lies though. Would someone
| who is opposed to this "compact" care to explain their view? I'm
| not interested in baseless name-calling ("fascist" etc) but I am
| interested in cogent reasoning.
|
| I didn't read the compact itself, but I did read the wikipedia
| article about it, and it seems to be a very positive set of
| criteria (safeguarding individuality and merit, protecting
| against the formation of ideological monoculture, protecting
| against hostile nation-state actors, etc)
|
| It's bizarre actually, because these institutions should be doing
| all of these things already. I don't know what to make of the
| fact that they aren't.
| mtalantikite wrote:
| Regardless of what is in the compact, it's important that our
| educational institutions have independence to run themselves as
| they see fit. To make funding conditional to a set of demands
| by the government takes away that independence.
| jtbayly wrote:
| He who pays the piper...
|
| This is why a couple of conservative schools don't accept any
| sort of federal money. Liberal schools might be considering
| doing the same.
|
| Otherwise, yes, an _independent_ school can do what they
| want. If you want to be truly independent, you have to be
| willing to walk away from the money. Anybody that gives money
| can attach conditions to it, including the government.
| kjksf wrote:
| That is obviously the case that federal money comes with
| strings and strings curtail independence.
|
| What you seem to imply that there should be no strings. Which
| is a position you can have but it has never been the case.
|
| To wit, one of the things this compact wants is an
| enforcement of civil rights act and Biden admin did the same
| thing:
|
| > The most important stipulation during the Biden
| administration attached to federal funding for universities
| was compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
| This law prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or
| national origin in any program or activity receiving federal
| financial assistance, including discrimination against Jewish
| students through antisemitic harassment or hostility on
| campus. Universities that fail to adequately address such
| issues risk federal investigations by the Department of
| Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and potential loss
| of funding.
|
| > Following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and
| subsequent campus protests, the administration opened over
| 100 Title VI investigations into universities for alleged
| antisemitic discrimination--more than in the entire previous
| four years combined. This included guidance like a May 2024
| "Dear Colleague" letter to colleges outlining examples of
| prohibited conduct, such as denying Jewish students equal
| access to education or tolerating harassment.
| jmathai wrote:
| I think decisions based off race, sex, etc. could probably be
| eased off a bit. But I don't know that it should be completely
| eliminated. Diversity and meritocracy don't always go hand in
| hand - I think a healthy balance is important.
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| I did read the Compact and had a similar response: "This all
| sounds very reasonable".
|
| I think the negative reaction to it is mostly a function of who
| is pushing it.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| It is good and Bayesian to be extra-skeptical of anything a
| Republican wants
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| It's the usual trick of writing something so that an
| uninterested reader assuming the common meaning of words will
| be completely nonplussed, but a lawyer or judge reading such
| a document adversarially will reach many unexpected
| conclusions.
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| "nonplussed" means "bewildered" or "really confused". Maybe
| you mean "not worried"?
|
| If you mean "not worried", then yeah, I bet you're right
| that there are a bunch of things that _could be_ entailed
| by the language that aren 't obvious. Good point.
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| "Nonplussed" also means "unfazed, unaffected, or
| unimpressed."
|
| A bit like "cleave" in that way.
|
| But yes, you read me correctly.
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| Let's focus on #2: Marketplace of Ideas and Civil Discourse.
|
| > Signatories commit themselves to revising governance
| structures as necessary to create such an environment,
| including but not limited to transforming or abolishing
| institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and
| even spark violence against conservative ideas.
|
| Only conservative ideas receive protected status under this
| compact. Why? It is objectively false that only conservative
| ideas are punished, belittled, and met with threats of violence
| on the relevant college campuses.
|
| > Such policies also shall recognize that academic freedom is
| not absolute, and universities shall adopt policies that
| prevent discriminatory, threatening, harassing, or other
| behaviors that abridge the rights of other members of the
| university community.
|
| Read strictly, this clause implies no protests or
| demonstrations of any kind of a college campus, including e.g.,
| the annual pro-life demonstrations at my alma mater (which
| occasionally became violent, by the way). It is naive to
| imagine this clause will be enforced equitably.
|
| > Signatories commit to rigorous, good faith, empirical
| assessment of a broad spectrum of viewpoints among faculty,
| students, and staff at all levels and to sharing the results of
| such assessments with the public; and to seek such a broad
| spectrum of viewpoints not just in the university as a whole,
| but within every field, department, school, and teaching unit.
|
| Every biology department must hire creationist professors.
| Every astronomy department must hire flat-earthers. Every
| geology department must hire young-earthers. Every medical
| school must hire germ-theory-skeptical epidemiologists.
|
| And across departments, too: we need mathematicians who believe
| in Fomenko's new chronology and ultrafinitist historians.
|
| I assume you'll argue these are hyperbole, but I've encountered
| such people during my time in academia.
|
| > Signatories acknowledge that the freedom to debate requires
| conditions of civility. Civility includes protections against
| institutional punishment or individual harassment for one's
| views.
|
| So, logically, a professor of classical philosophy must
| entertain homophobic assertions about Plato and Aristotle, and
| cannot sanction in any way the student interrupting class in
| this fashion.
|
| I also see that a Christian student could occupy a Hillel
| building (a Jewish student organization) and could not be
| legally removed or administratively sanctioned for doing so
| under this section of the policy.
|
| You might argue that these fall under the ban on "heckler's
| veto" defined later in this paragraph, but strictly speaking
| they don't. The "heckler's veto" ban applies to the
| hypothetical Jewish students attempting to convince the
| Christian student to leave.
|
| > Signatories shall adopt policies prohibiting incitement to
| violence, including calls for murder or genocide or support for
| entities designated by the U.S. government as terrorist
| organizations.
|
| Recall how NSPM-7 recently expanded the definition of
| "terrorist organization" to include groups that display some of
| the following "common threads": "anti-Americanism, anti-
| capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of
| the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and
| gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional
| American views on family, religion, and morality."
|
| How any Islamic student group, no matter how explicitly pro-
| Israel and pro-Christianity, survives this definition is an
| real question.
|
| EDIT: To those who believe this example is unjustified, please
| see
| https://www.christianity.com/newsletters/breakpoint/understa...
| for a typical American Evangelical opinion on the status of
| Islam.
|
| > The university shall impartially and vigorously enforce all
| rights and restrictions it adopts with respect to free speech
| and expression.
|
| As we have seen, this concluding sentence is contradicted by
| the whole of the policy that appears before it.
|
| How is that for a breakdown? I didn't say "fascist" once, may I
| collect my five pounds?
| nis0s wrote:
| > How any Islamic student group, no matter how explicitly
| pro-Israel and pro-Christianity, survives this definition is
| a real question.
|
| This is a disingenuous example, Islamic student groups are
| not anti-capitalist, anti-American, or anti-Christian, and
| giving an example like this only creates FUD.
| achandlerwhite wrote:
| To you and me they are not, but to this administration I
| wouldn't be surprised if they were considered as such.
| nis0s wrote:
| This administration is letting Qatar build an airbase on
| US soil. I think it's wiser to believe what people do
| more so than what they say, or what others say about
| them.
| maldusiecle wrote:
| > In matters of bathroom, locker-room, and sports segregation,
| universities will define sex categories based on reproductive
| and biological criteria.
|
| In other words, trans people can't use the bathrooms matching
| their gender identity.
|
| > Calls for ideological diversity, not just at the campus
| level, "but within every field, department, school, and
| teaching unit."
|
| In other words, every academic department is susceptible to
| ideological litmus tests defined by the state. If Trump's white
| house feels like your Computer Science department has too many
| Democrats in it, you fix that problem or you lose your funding.
|
| > Restricts student visas to foreign students who ... "are ...
| supportive of, American and Western values."
|
| In other words, another ideological litmus test, only in this
| case the consequence is that foreign students can be thrown out
| at will.
|
| > Requires that "university employees, in their capacity as
| university representatives" as well as all colleges, faculties,
| departments, and other academic units "abstain from actions or
| speech relating to societal and political events"
|
| In other words, tenured faculty lose their right to free
| speech.
| danaris wrote:
| It is not baseless name-calling to dub someone a "fascist" when
| they exhibit all the well-known signs of fascism.
|
| There's too much pussyfooting around it these days. Trump is a
| fascist, as are the upper echelons of his administration.
|
| If people had been willing to say this in 2016, maybe he
| wouldn't have been elected twice, to all of our detriment.
| AvAn12 wrote:
| Try considering the opposite situation. Suppose Biden or Obama
| sent a mandate to universities making unilateral and
| ideologically-motivated demands of their curriculum, policies,
| and practices. Everyone cool with that scenario? Or, does each
| new presidential administration get to impose their will on
| institutions of higher learning? What would that be like?
| dekhn wrote:
| There was an Obama "Dear Colleague" letter (actually, 3 of
| them) that I think at least partially qualify as unilateral
| and ideologically motivated.
|
| Yes, every new administration can attempt to impose their
| will on institutions of higher learning (so long as the
| administration has some sort of leverage, like funding or
| legal threats). The wise administrations limit their
| imposition, preferring to allow academia to enjoy high levels
| of freedom, autonomy, and funding to achieve their mission.
| baked_beanz wrote:
| My main objections are to the following points:
|
| - Specifically calling out protecting "conservative ideas" in
| their section on creating an "intellectually open campus
| environment". This is a dog whistle that makes it patently
| clear which viewpoints will be protected, and which won't. See
| what happened to Mahmoud Khalil for a recent example of how
| this will work in practice.
|
| - Preventing admissions of foreign students based on "hostility
| to America or our allies", which is obviously an attempt to
| silence dissent. Who is responsible for defining what
| "hostility" means? If a foreign student supports boycotting
| Israel due to their ongoing genocide against the Palestinian
| people, would they be barred from admission to an American
| university?
|
| I would contend that threatening to annex Canada and Greenland
| constitutes "hostility to American allies", but since those
| talking points are being espoused by the sitting president, it
| stands to reason that this administration's justice department
| wouldn't intervene to prevent a potential student with similar
| views from from admitted to an American school.
|
| - Forcing institutions to define bathroom usage criteria based
| on biological sex. Putting aside for a moment the fact that
| this is a blatant attempt to humiliate trans people -- how does
| this work in practice? Do you hire someone to stand at every
| bathroom door and prevent people from entering if they don't
| fit your notion of what that gender is "supposed" to look like?
| Do you demand identity documents before letting someone use the
| toilet?
|
| There are plenty of videos online of cisgender people being
| accosted _in the bathroom that aligns with their biological
| sex_ simply because other people _assume_ based on their
| appearance that they are trans.
| kjksf wrote:
| Your "I don't know what words mean" is very selective.
|
| So you don't know what "hostile to US" means.
|
| Do you know what "Unwelcome verbal, nonverbal, or physical
| conduct based on protected characteristics" means? This is
| one of the many vague prescriptions in MIT code of conduct.
|
| If I make a sour face at a gay person, is it "unwelcome
| nonverbal conduct"? Should I be punished for that? But not
| punished for shouting "from the river to the sea" i.e.
| demanding annihilation of Israel?
|
| Is your argument that we should just scrap all code of
| conducts because it is by nature open to interpretation?
|
| Or you just object to those that tickle your politics?
| kjksf wrote:
| > Forcing institutions to define bathroom usage criteria
| based on biological sex. How does it work in practice?
|
| In practice it means that MIT has to say "men bathrooms are
| for biological men, and women bathrooms are for biological
| women".
|
| They don't have to post Seal Team 6 operators to guard
| bathrooms or require DNA testing in order to access
| bathrooms.
|
| And if someone violates that rule and is reported, they need
| to punish that person appropriately, just as they punish for
| any other violation of stated rules and regulations.
|
| And the reason this is needed because many schools adopted
| the opposite rule: they explicitly state that men can use
| women's bathroom and they punish women who complain about
| that.
|
| See e.g.: https://vermontdailychronicle.com/klar-randolph-
| school-offic...
|
| > One well-documented example is that of Blake Allen, a
| 14-year-old high school student at Randolph Union High School
| in Vermont. In 2022, Blake and her teammates on the girls'
| volleyball team complained about a transgender student
| (biologically male) using the girls' locker room and
| bathroom, citing discomfort and an alleged inappropriate
| comment made by the student while the girls were changing.
| The school suspended Blake for three days for "misgendering"
| the transgender student after she referred to them as male in
| discussions about the incident. Her father, Travis Allen, was
| fired from his coaching position for supporting her and
| posting about the issue on social media.
| sgentle wrote:
| Careful not to fall into the "People's Democratic Republic"
| trap: the way something is described and its purported aims are
| not at all the same as its actual effects (and, often, not even
| its intended ones). Politics is, in many cases, the art of
| selling you a box of spoons with "forks" printed on the label.
|
| Instead of asking "does this agreement sound nice?", ask what
| power it gives, to whom, and what might they want to do with
| it.
|
| Some prompts to spark a cogent reasoning process:
|
| > Signatories commit themselves to [...] transforming or
| abolishing institutional units that purposefully punish,
| belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas
|
| What "institutional units" might this mean? How are they
| identified? Who identifies them? What is the threshold for
| belittling conservative ideas that might trigger the
| "transforming or abolishing" remedy?
|
| > Universities shall be responsible for ensuring that they do
| not knowingly: (1) permit actions by the university, university
| employees, university students, or individuals external to the
| university community to delay or disrupt class instruction or
| disrupt libraries or other traditional study locations [...]
| signatories commit to using lawful force if necessary to
| prevent these violations
|
| What do "actions by" "university students" to "delay or disrupt
| class instruction" refer to? What kinds of disruptive action
| might the people writing this document be so concerned about
| that they would ask universities to "commit to using lawful
| force" to prevent? What sort of scenario is being envisaged
| here?
|
| > Institutions commit to defining and otherwise interpreting
| "male," "female," "woman," and "man" according to reproductive
| function and biological processes.
|
| Doesn't it seem oddly specific to assert a definition like
| this? Why can't a university decide for itself? How does this
| assertion square with "maintaining a vibrant marketplace of
| ideas" and the "empirical assessment of a broad spectrum of
| viewpoints"? Why only this definition and no others?
|
| I could go on, but hopefully you get the picture. It's an
| important skill to practice critically reading a document the
| same way you might critically audit code. Don't ask what it
| seems like it does, ask what it might allow someone to do.
| kjksf wrote:
| There was a wave of violent disruptions across many
| universities under the guise of protests.
|
| "protestors" took over libraries, disrupted lectures,
| vandalized university property, used the power of the mob to
| intimidate students who disagreed.
|
| The universities have rules against all of that but failed to
| stop it, leading to weeks long disruptions on campus.
|
| There are videos of all that on the internet.
|
| And you're playing dumb asking what actions do they mean.
| Those actions: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=u
| niversity+prot...
|
| Actions like setting fire to university, which apparently
| happened yesterday:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voqhFZZ9zyA
|
| Actions like smashing windows by masked hooligans:
| https://www.youtube.com/shorts/CH2kUU3h9j4
|
| Actins like breaking cop's nose:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyMssP-A09A
|
| As to defining a "woman" as anything else than a woman: it's
| modern day flat earthism, not something a serious person
| should entertain.
| pastel8739 wrote:
| Notably, the language in the compact does not limit legal
| intervention to those violent actions. It requires action
| against even peaceful protesting in a library, or even in a
| hallway or outdoor area (as a student I often studied in
| both of these places).
|
| Further, your "setting fire to university" video is in
| South Africa; it hardly seems relevant here. Access to
| global news will always provide extremes. To me, it's
| important that actions we take serve the everyday reality
| rather than the rare occurrences that happen in a few
| places but are amplified by human attraction to violence
| and drama.
| runako wrote:
| Highly suggest reading the document[1] if you are interested.
|
| The overarching problem is it moves management decisions from
| the colleges to the White House. But here are a couple of
| really problematic points:
|
| - mandates government price setting
|
| - requires institutions to promise to use force against minors
| when faced with unknown hypotheticals
|
| - requires universities to monitor & censor staff and faculty
|
| - requires government oversight of classroom grading, in the
| total absence of government standards
|
| - bathroom fetish likely in conflict with state laws
|
| - White House oversight of which academic programs are allowed,
| and the budgets attached to each. White House does not specify
| whether programs currently in flight will be allowed to
| continue through the school year, or whether students in those
| programs will need to leave immediately.
|
| - White House decides what criteria can be used for admission
|
| - White House decides which "institutional units" are allowed
| to function
|
| - To enforce a parts of the Compact would effectively require
| the White House to install commissars at the institution to
| e.g. monitor speech and communications to ensure they are
| acceptable. This alone should be disqualifying.
|
| - Many discretionary decisions like the above are made at the
| White House without any binding written guidance
|
| Basically, an independent university would only agree to this
| if it would have to close otherwise.
|
| The Compact is not conservative because it centralizes
| decisions best made lower down; it aims to radically reshape
| higher education; it mandates prices; it promulgates ideology,
| and more. Conservatives should also reject this Compact.
|
| 1 -
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/documents/22e45e59-75ac-4a81-...
| dartharva wrote:
| From MIT's financials (https://facts.mit.edu/operating-
| financials/):
|
| Operating Revenue: $5.07B, out of which - Federal funding
| (sponsored support): $2.30B
|
| Operating Costs: $4.78B, out of which - Sponsored research
| expenditure: $2.10B
|
| Additionally, they seem to have $24.57B worth of endowed funds
| and get gifts and pledges of net ~$0.6B every year.
|
| Looks like they can wane off their dependence on federal funding
| if only they tried. They don't _have_ to deal with idiot
| politicians.
| kjksf wrote:
| In theory they could but in practice they don't want to. No
| company wants to loose $2B a year of free money.
|
| Suddenly loosing 45% of revenues would be devastating.
|
| And yes, MIT is a company. They have a CEO (under a different
| name), a board of directors, thousands of employees and they
| provide a service for a fee.
|
| No one that works for MIT wants to loose that money. Not CEO,
| not board of directors, not employees.
|
| Maybe they'll put ideology first and $2B second but I doubt it.
| dekhn wrote:
| Endowed funds are restricted- the donors can place constraints
| on how they are spent. They are not fungible and cannot
| reliably used to pay for a wide range of things that are
| currently paid for by federal funding.
|
| Personally I would love to see the richest people in the nation
| contribute a lot more to universities in the form of
| unrestricted funds, to give these universities some options
| when it comes to being dependent on federal funding. But I
| guess you don't get rich by giving unrestricted funds to
| universities.
| pastel8739 wrote:
| I really find it surprising how often people bring up
| endowments as if they are a resource that can be spent. The
| purpose of an endowment is to produce revenue via investment
| income; that investment income is already reflected in the
| operating revenue under "Investment return to operations". MIT
| cannot and should not spend their endowment beyond this
| investment income; doing so would jeopardize the long-term
| viability of MIT.
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| I am affiliated and have been affiliated with several top
| universities, including the two in Cambridge, MA. I'm an
| academic. I say that because this stuff directly affects my
| career prospects.
|
| The Compact itself can be found here:
| https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/1...
| It's short, I ask that you read it before commenting.
|
| It's too bad MIT has taken this stance. I think the Compact is
| overall an obviously reasonable, good-faith effort to improve
| universities in the United States. The one area I'd change a bit
| is the specific mention of "conservative" ideas:
|
| "...purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence
| against conservative ideas."
|
| It's entirely fair because these universities _do_ purposefully
| punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative
| ideas. But it 's not what I'd want in such a document because
| next time around it could be "liberal" ideas, or "communist"
| ideas, or...
|
| Everything else seems on the nose. I would hasten to remind you
| that the threat is _not_ "we'll force you to do this stuff", it
| is "if you want federal funding, you'll do this stuff". Which
| seems fine to me. Much of the document is merely trying to
| actually enforce the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
| bananapub wrote:
| > obviously reasonable, good-faith effort to improve
| universities in the United States
|
| I really find HN to be a truly surreal place at this time.
| wrs wrote:
| The purpose of a university is to expand knowledge, which is
| itself not a "conservative idea".
|
| A university that can't "belittle" obviously false ideas like
| "the earth is flat" or "evolution isn't real" or "the climate
| isn't changing" just because they're popular with whoever's
| calling themselves "conservatives" at the time is not capable
| of functioning.
|
| You're picking out the quote that reveals the entire document
| for what it really is, and choosing to ignore it.
| wat10000 wrote:
| I'm reminded of this classic:
|
| Conservative: I have been censored for my conservative views
|
| Me: Holy shit! You were censored for wanting lower taxes?
|
| Con: LOL no...no not those views
|
| Me: So....deregulation?
|
| Con: Haha no not those views either
|
| Me: Which views, exactly?
|
| Con: Oh, you know the ones
| runako wrote:
| Can you imagine the conservatives at MIT (they are there!)
| being happy that MIT outsourced price-setting and hiring
| decisions to the White House?
|
| This Compact aims to radically reshape the management of higher
| education. In that, it is anything but conservative.
| Conservatives should reject it for that reason alone.
|
| > "if you want federal funding, you'll do this stuff"
|
| There's another piece that keeps getting lost. That is: the US
| government has a set of policy goals it is trying to
| accomplish. Outsourcing to third parties some parts of the work
| of getting there is a cash-light approach. As an American, I
| think this is better than e.g. the DoD building duplicate
| capacity (and competing for researchers) at multiples of the
| cost.
|
| In one sense, MIT gets federal funding in the same way that
| Raytheon gets federal funding (and there are DoD asset tags at
| MIT to prove it).
|
| This isn't _just_ MIT getting funding, it 's _also_ the US
| buying some capacity from MIT. It 's a mutually beneficial
| transaction.
| wat10000 wrote:
| It's a power grab that makes the university effectively
| subordinate to the federal government.
|
| The most important part is the end: if the university violates
| the agreement, they not only lose funding, they also have to
| give back what they received the previous year. Such a clawback
| would be devastating, much worse than merely denying funding
| going forward. And who determines whether there's a violation?
| The Department of Justice apparently has sole power to make
| that determination. There's no mention of any appeals process
| or oversight.
|
| That means that if the President has a compliant Attorney
| General, they can demand pretty much anything of the university
| under threat of finding them in violation, regardless of
| whether they've actually done anything wrong.
|
| It could be a reasonable, good-faith effort if it were put
| forth by reasonable, good-faith people. But it very much was
| not.
| nis0s wrote:
| This tells you who really wears the pants in the relationship.
| Western nations are screwed because their bedrock is
| enlightenment, but their adversaries have no such ideals to be
| held up to. The rule of law that many such organizations enjoy in
| the West would be denied to them in places their faculty members
| defend. It's important to reflect on what works well while trying
| to fix what doesn't; discourse often neglects or downplays the
| former.
| necovek wrote:
| Who are these adversaries you speak of? How have they attacked
| the US of A?
|
| As an example, for a long time, spiritual and scientific
| enlightement was the calling card of the Warszaw pact
| countries: they just couldn't figure out how to earn money off
| it (free university education and intensive scentific
| curiculums in primary and high schools were common).
|
| For China today, they are thoroughly convinced they are doing
| the same by restricting access to "bad information" (like
| "Western nations" are now starting to do with eg. porn, and did
| similar stuff with "fake news" during the pandemic) -- the
| difference being that they did figure out how to earn money
| while doing that.
|
| In the Middle East, people die and kill in the name of their
| version of "enlightenment".
|
| Now, not saying there never was any enlightenment in the
| Western world, but it was built on slavery, exploitation and
| being first to many an industrial improvement (like using coal
| or oil to drive progress, that the whole world now suffers
| for).
|
| Yes, I'd rather live in a "Western" country than any of the
| "adversaries", but they are only a risk to our way of life if
| we do not believe it is the right, enlightened way.
|
| Because if it is, we are willing to pay for it. Are we?
| nis0s wrote:
| > Yes, I'd rather live in a "Western" country than any of the
| "adversaries"
|
| It's important to reflect on why you say this because when
| push comes to shove, the moral relativism rings a hollow
| tone. The preceding parts of your post are just part of the
| education instilled in you from having been exposed to
| enlightenment-influenced frameworks.
| necovek wrote:
| Not really, it mostly speaks to the fact that I've been
| indoctrinated through my upbringing, education and
| environment that this is the "true" enlightenment. Even for
| people on the "other" side, they ask the same questions and
| they see the hipocrisy (it's not hard to see how capital
| corrupts) and get stuck. This is why morality moves in
| cycles even in the Western world: morality is a human
| construct created through _reason_ to best enable
| civilization and progress.
|
| I did not add that statement accidentally to "off myself":
| I did that to acknowledge that this is hard to overcome,
| and that none of us has a moral upper hand, really (me
| included).
| dem_bones wrote:
| It sounds like MIT basically agrees with the Compact except for a
| few minor details. Unfortunate they didn't quote any specifics on
| what these are.
| aquova wrote:
| I think they completely disagree with the entire document, this
| is as kindly worded but complete rejection as they could make
| it.
| dem_bones_ wrote:
| Most of the document seems reasonable though.
| aquova wrote:
| Regardless of what's even in the document, the core issue
| is the administration effectively attempting to punish
| universities who do not agree to whatever standards they
| dictate. Not because anything actually against any enacted
| state or federal law, or even standards set out for every
| university, but based on policies the executive can
| arbitrarily decide for a handful of schools. That's why
| you're seeing such push back.
|
| As for the document itself, it's a bit of a mixed bag, with
| a lot of subtle gatchas to make it sound enticing on the
| surface, but more sinister the closer you look. I honestly
| like some of the proposed tuition changes, but there's some
| language regarding enrollment that I find problematic.
| However, since the whole thing is being given to them with
| the threat of a knife hanging over their head, you're going
| to see a lot of universities be opposed to this.
| BrokenCogs wrote:
| Does it? The entire Compact document is contradictory. "We
| don't want diversity initiatives unless they benefit the
| white American and conservative thought."
|
| "We want only the best and brightest to be let in, unless
| they are foreign or female."
|
| MIT is clearly rejecting it diplomatically
| anonymousiam wrote:
| Because nobody (including the link from president.mit.edu)
| included the text of the Compact, I'm linking it here:
| https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/1...
|
| After a quick skim, I don't see an issue. Is the opposition to
| this based upon any rational argument, or is it just "Resist
| Trump"?
| mostlysimilar wrote:
| Government forcing institutions to conform to a specific
| ideology.
|
| > Signatories commit themselves to revising governance
| structures as necessary to create such an environment,
| including but not limited to transforming or abolishing
| institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and
| even spark violence against conservative ideas.
|
| > Institutions commit to defining and otherwise interpreting
| "male," "female," "woman," and "man" according to reproductive
| function and biological processes.
| benjaminsky2 wrote:
| I read the whole thing. Seems pretty fair to me, including the
| section prohibiting discrimination against conservative ideas.
| With all the coverage I expected something crazy.
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