Trump and MAGA's war on science, logic and reason.
This culture war pitting the liberals against the conservatives is really pitting 13th century thinking against 2025 thinking!
Trump wants conservative ideas to get respect, and make it illegal to belittle them!
How does a university do that when their ideas are fucking nuts!
ll but 2 Universities Decline a Trump Offer of Preferential Funding
One of the two, Vanderbilt University, signaled it had reservations.
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The University of Arizona was the seventh school to say no to the Trump administration’s proposal.Credit...Caitlin O'Hara for The New York Times
By Alan Blinder
Oct. 20, 2025Updated 9:16 p.m. ET
Seven of the nine universities that the White House initially approached about a plan to steer more federal money toward schools aligned with President Trump’s priorities have refused to endorse the proposal.
On Monday evening, an eighth signaled that it had reservations about it.
Only one, the University of Texas, suggested it might be open to signing on quickly.
The University of Arizona rejected the Trump administration’s compact on Monday, joining Brown University, Dartmouth College, M.I.T., the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California and the University of Virginia.
Vanderbilt University did not directly express a view about the plan on Monday — the deadline the Trump administration initially gave universities for feedback — but its chancellor suggested misgivings about parts of it.
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The compact includes conditions like agreeing “that academic freedom is not absolute” and pledging to potentially shut down “institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle and even spark violence against conservative ideas.”
Although the Trump administration floated the possibility of greater federal funding for schools that endorsed the plan, one university after another said they could not accept the terms.
“Principles like academic freedom, merit-based research funding and institutional independence are foundational and must be preserved,” the University of Arizona’s president, Suresh Garimella, wrote in an open letter on Monday, though he added that some of the White House’s ideas “deserve thoughtful consideration.”
Vanderbilt’s chancellor, Daniel Diermeier, stopped short of rejecting the proposal and said that the school would share more feedback with the government about the future of higher education. But Dr. Diermeier signaled that Vanderbilt had concerns about the draft the White House circulated this month.
“Our North Star has always been that academic freedom, free expression and independence are essential for universities to make their vital and singular contributions to society,” Dr. Diermeier wrote in an open letter. “We also believe that research awards should be made based on merit alone. This merit-based approach has enabled the scholarly and scientific excellence that has driven American health, security and prosperity for decades. It must be preserved.”
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Asked for comment, the White House pointed to a Monday evening television appearance by May Mailman, a senior adviser leading the Trump strategy, on Fox Business.
In the interview, Ms. Mailman said that universities were “saying they have various issues, but that’s exactly what we asked them for: We said that by today, we wanted to hear your feedback, not because we don’t care about it but because we do care about it.”
Ms. Mailman was among the administration officials who signed letters this month that told the nine universities that the proposal was “largely in its final form.”
Alan Blinder is a national correspondent for The Times, covering education.
See more on: Education Department (US), Vanderbilt University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brown University, University of Arizona, Donald Trump
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