The University of Pennsylvania’s faculty senate Wednesday joined a growing chorus of concern over the compact proposed by President Donald Trump’s administration, voting overwhelmingly to urge Penn’s leaders to reject it “and any other proposal that similarly threatens our mission and values.”

The one-page document passed by the faculty senate cited concerns over loss of scholarly diversity and academic freedom and criticized the idea of awarding funding to universities based on anything other than “scholarly excellence, scientific merit, and societal impact.”

“The ‘Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education’ demands that American universities surrender their institutional autonomy and place themselves under the control of the U.S. Federal Government,” the senate wrote. “We reject that demand.”

The action came five days before the Monday deadline for Penn to provide official feedback to the U.S. Department of Education on the compact. Also on Wednesday, a group of elected officials, including state lawmakers, a City Council member, and a member of the Pennsylvania Legislative Black Caucus, called on Penn to reject the compact.

Penn was one of nine universities the Trump administration invited to sign the compact earlier this month in exchange for preferential treatment on federal funding. Since then, the offer has been extended to all colleges, Bloomberg reported.

Penn president J. Larry Jameson has said the university will evaluate the proposal against Penn’s values and mission but is seeking “no special consideration” in regard to funding; the university wants to be judged on its work.

Reactions at other colleges

On Friday, the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said in a letter to the White House and Education Secretary Linda McMahon that she “cannot support” the compact, the Associated Press reported. She cited concerns over free-speech limits and the university’s independence and asserted that it conflicts with the school’s belief that scientific funding should be meted out on merit.

Brown University rejected the compact Wednesday in a letter to the Trump administration, the New York Times reported.

Dartmouth College president Sian Leah Beilock told faculty she will not agree to the current version of the compact, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Other schools have yet to weigh in definitively, though the University of Texas signaled initial enthusiasm over the proposal.

The faculty senates at Vanderbilt University and the University of Arizona have urged that the compact be rejected, according to published reports.

Faculty overwhelmingly rejected the compact at the University of Virginia, while leaders there said that they would evaluate the proposal but that it would be difficult to accept certain provisions.

Meanwhile, according to the Daily Pennsylvanian, Penn’s student newspaper, Penn’s undergraduate assembly issued a statement along with student government groups from six of the other universities opposing the compact.

Penn’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors blasted the compact, and a petition against it launched by Penn graduate student workers, postdoctoral researchers, and research associates has garnered nearly 1,900 signatures.

“Tell Penn’s leadership that there is nothing to be gained by signing away the rights of its students, faculty and staff,” the petition states.

The compact would give the Trump administration wide-ranging influence over the colleges’ hiring, admissions, tuition pricing, and even curriculum to some extent.

Among the provisions, colleges would have to agree to ban the use of race and sex in hiring, admissions, and financial support for students; limit international undergraduate enrollment to 15%; and require applicants take the SAT or other standardized admission tests. It also says the schools should freeze tuition for American students for five years, prevent grade inflation, and make conservative students feel more welcome on campus.

Colleges also would have to commit to “defining and otherwise interpreting ‘male,’ ‘female,’ ‘woman,’ and ‘man’ according to reproductive function and biological processes,” the compact states.

Penn in July struck an agreement with the Trump administration to apologize to teammates of transgender women’s swim team athlete Lia Thomas, retroactively give Thomas’ individual Penn records to swimmers who held the next-best times, and adhere to a Trump executive order’s definition of male and female in regard to athletics. The new compact in effect would spread what Penn agreed to for women’s athletics across the entire university’s operations.

Penn’s faculty senate said the compact “proposes an unprecedented and unconstitutional degree of governmental intrusion on academic freedom” and “undermines the ideal of scholarly diversity by allowing the government to define which intellectual approaches should be prioritized.”

It also includes “infeasible and likely unconstitutional restrictions on how applicants are evaluated and admitted,” the faculty senate said.

While the White House has touted the compact as a path to academic excellence, the faculty senate disagreed.

“We, too, seek excellence in higher education,” the body wrote. “However, the best approach is not capitulation to a ‘Compact’ that purports to promote academic excellence but instead shackles the independence, creativity, and pursuit of truth that has enabled American universities to provide enormous benefits to our society.”

Meanwhile, universities that were not among the original nine are starting to react to the compact. At Rutgers, New Jersey’s flagship university, the three unions representing more than 10,000 educators, researchers, and clinicians called on the school to reject it.

“It’s in tense times that we see the real measure of an institution,” Heather Pierce, president of Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union, representing lecturers on the three main campuses, said in a statement. “Acquiescence to those in power undermines our democracy and our basic rights to speech and expression.”

©2025 The Philadelphia Inquirer, LLC. Visit at inquirer.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.