Trump Bribes Universities to Comply with Ultra-Reactionary Agenda

Read our editorial on the attacks on education here.

The White House sent a so-called “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” to nine major universities on October 1. The details of the Compact include limiting foreign-born enrollments in undergraduate classes to less than 15% of the total size, requiring “a vibrant marketplace of ideas on campus” and increasing repression of anti-imperialist student activism, and mandating immigrants to take chauvinist “civics” classes. Universities have until October 20 to respond, and if they sign, they will be rewarded with a “competitive advantage” to federal funding, according to the White House.

The letter was sent to Vanderbilt University, the University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth College, the University of Southern California, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Arizona, Brown University, and the University of Virginia. So far, MIT has rebuked the deal.

The Compact differs from previous Trump administration attempts to expand control over universities by trying to win them over through bribes instead of just threatening to cut funding. Earlier this year, the Trump administration tried to stifle the pro-Palestine solidarity movement on campus by threatening to cut funding for universities where the student movement was most active like Columbia and Harvard, providing a cover for university administrations to justify intensified repression under the guise of combating antisemitism and to protect their funding. As previously stated in The Worker, “The cuts serve a dual purpose: they continue the trend of austerity measures across the federal government under the guise of ideological attacks while pressuring the university administration to unleash more terror in the vain hope of drowning out the student resistance with state violence.”

College campuses have also seen a renewed reactionary recruitment drive following the annihilation of Charlie Kirk, founder of the far-right extremist organization Turning Point USA. Students and faculty who oppose Kirk and his organization have frequently been met with termination or other disciplinary consequences. This demonstrates the one-sided nature of bourgeois “free speech,” which in reality is only speech that benefits and strengthens the ruling class—in this case, its attempt to overcome its economic crisis by attacking the working class while stifling anti-imperialist activism that hinders its reactionary aims.

This attack on education, students, and faculty is part of the overall trend of reactionization of U.S. society and the contradiction of collusion and contention between the two ruling mafias, the Democrats and the Republicans. Trump’s latest move is a continuation of the reality of university education under imperialism—institutions propped up by billionaire donors and state and federal governments to ensure alignment with their class interests. Trump takes this a step further: as part of the ongoing battle between the two mafias for control of the state bureaucracy, the Republicans extend this struggle to universities, ideological institutions that have largely been strongholds for the Democrats.

In response to the Compact, California Governor Gavin Newsom, who is among the favorites to be the next Democrat nominee for President in the 2028 electoral farce, threatened to withhold the state funding “instantly” for any universities who sign on. Thus, university administrations which often claim to be “above the fray” of the political crisis are increasingly being forced to openly declare their allegiance to one party or the other, all for the benefit of U.S. imperialism and at the expense of the working class and masses.

---

The Worker is an entirely volunteer-run revolutionary newspaper free from and radically antagonistic to corporate influence. We rely on the support of our readers to sustain our editorial line in service of the working class and the reconstitution of its party, the Communist Party. Make a one-time or recurring donation to our newspaper today: