University of Arizona President Suresh Garimella sent an email to the campus community about the White House’s proposed higher education compact, a week after receiving it.
“We recognize that this proposal has generated a wide range of reactions and perspectives within our community and beyond,” Garimella wrote Thursday afternoon, the day after the Tucson City Council passed a resolution urging him to reject the compact and three days after the UA Faculty Senate did the same.
“Working with the Arizona Board of Regents, we are thoroughly reviewing the compact to understand its full scope and implications,” Garimella said. “We are also engaging shared governance leaders representing faculty, staff and students, and other leaders across the state and nation to gather their input.”
Garimella told the university community that as the state’s “keystone, land-grant university,” guided by the UA’s three strategic imperatives — student success, research that shapes the future and community engagement — UA will act in the best interests of students, faculty, staff and the state as well.
“We will continue to keep our community informed as this process moves forward,” he wrote. He did not indicate when the UA might make a decision.
The “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” and its cover letter, sent to nine universities, including the UA, on Oct. 1, gave a deadline of Oct. 20 for university presidents to send the White House “limited, targeted feedback“ on the compact and its list of demands, although Trump administration officials said it was “largely in final form.”
University of Arizona President Suresh Garimella
The deadline to sign onto the compact is Nov. 21.
The 10-page compact would require the UA to ban the use of race or sex in hiring and admissions; freeze tuition for five years; cap international undergrad enrollment at 15%; apply a strict definition of gender to campus bathrooms, locker rooms and women’s sports teams; transform or abolish departments that “belittle” conservative ideas; bar employees from speaking out as university representatives on external societal and political events; and other requirements. It also calls for a diverse mix of political voices on campus and for cutbacks to university administrative costs, among many other requests.
In return, the Trump administration says the UA would receive federal funding advantages.
Any university that agrees to the deal and breaks any of its provisions, as determined by the U.S. Justice Department, would have to return all federal money received during the year of any violation. The document also suggests universities that don’t sign will lose federal benefits: “Institutions of higher education are free to develop models and values other than those” in the compact, it says, “if the institution elects to forego federal benefits.”
UA Provost Patricia Prelock told the Faculty Senate on Monday that: “The university leadership, in coordination with the Arizona board of regents, is carefully reviewing the compact to truly fully understand what is its content, what is its scope, what are the legal ramifications, what are the potential implications?”
“We’re in communication with shared governance ... and other universities that have received the compact. No decisions have been made. We will communicate further once we have more details and once we do our consultation with the governance groups,” she said.
At Monday’s meeting, faculty senators passed a resolution urging Garimella to reject the compact, with 40 votes in favor, eight in opposition and one abstention.
“This compact contains provisions which endanger the independence, excellence, and integrity of the University of Arizona and infringe on the constitutional rights of members of the University of Arizona community,” the resolution says.
The other eight universities invited to be the first to sign onto the compact were: Brown University, Dartmouth College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas, Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia.
The president of Dartmouth, Sian Beilock, became the first president among the nine to voice opposition to the compact. Beilock wrote to her campus community: “We will never compromise our academic freedom and our ability to govern ourselves.”
And then, on Friday, MIT became the first of the universities to say it would reject the compact.
