I hope the other universities involved also resist. We'll see.
I think you may have meant "refuse and resist" (or something similar) in your comment, based on the first half.
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
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.
[1] https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-white-house-sent-its-c...
You forgot to add, "and has nothing to do with modern US politics."
Wikipedia: "Fascism is characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived interest of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy"
- Dictatorial leader - President Trump tries to push things through Executive Orders, which are supposed to go through Congress. And that one guy in his admin said he has "plenary" (I guess meaning total, unquestioned) authority
- Centralized autocracy - "Autocracy is a form of government in which absolute power is held by one person, known as an autocrat. It includes absolute monarchy and all forms of dictatorship, while it is contrasted with democracy and other forms of free government" - Same thing
- Militarism - The President has deployed National Guard and militarized ICE agents to American cities under the guise of improving public safety. The real reason is to terrorize non-white people and prepare for interfering with or preventing the next election. He also attacked ships from another country without any just cause.
- Forcible suppression of opposition - I believe right now Trump's administration is going after an Attorney General? ICE has also been detaining and physically harming people who try to (legally) film them. There is certainly more suppression I'm forgetting and more in the pipeline. The Republican party also generally seemed okay with violence against Democratic Party elected officials. I seem to recall violence against Nancy Pelosi's husband went un-remarked-upon.
- Belief in a natural social hierarchy - I don't have pull quotes from elected officials but there is a lot of white supremacy in the Republican party and among their voter base. They have ideas like "America First" where, when you dig into it, "American" means "pure-blood white person". They also seem to broadly look down on women, gay people, transgender people, the usual suspects. Patriachy is popular among the right, they'll say things like wives should submit to their husbands, women would categorically be happier as stay-at-home mothers, and some have opposed women's right to vote.
- Subordination of individual interests for the perceived interest of the nation or race - We are being asked to give up our civil rights, as well as our free trade (via tariffs that nobody wants) for some nonsense efforts from the President and the Republican Party.
- Strong regimentation of society and the economy - Kind of a restatement but again - Tariffs, deploying the military and the police without warrants against citizens and residents who have not been properly accused of any crime, yada yada
I liked the “These values and other MIT practices meet or exceed many standards outlined in the document you sent” line.
> 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.
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.
What's the context here?
> Signatories commit to using lawful force if necessary to prevent these violations and to swift, serious, and consistent sanctions for those who commit them.
Students generally enter college as minors, so this is asking colleges to commit to using force against minors while only talking about hypothetical events.
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.
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.
I think the negative reaction to it is mostly a function of who is pushing it.
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.
A bit like “cleave” in that way.
But yes, you read me correctly.
> 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?
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.
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.
> In other words, trans people can't use the bathrooms matching their gender identity.
This is a positive outcome. No-one should be imposing themselves on spaces intended only for the opposite sex.
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.
- 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.
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.
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.
I really find HN to be a truly surreal place at this time.
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.
smrtinsert•3h ago
hexis•2h ago
laidoffamazon•2h ago
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•2h ago
laidoffamazon•1h ago
fedsocpuppet•53m ago
ReptileMan•2h ago
magnio•2h ago
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•1h ago
01HNNWZ0MV43FF•37m ago
NoImmatureAdHom•51m ago
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•36m ago
NoImmatureAdHom•31m ago
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.