By Brad Brooks
(Reuters) -Brown University President Christina Paxson on Wednesday said she had refused to sign her Ivy League school onto a Trump administration memo, making Brown the second school to refute the offer sent to nine elite universities laying out detailed policies they should follow to get preferential consideration for federal funding.
In a letter addressed to Education Secretary Linda McMahon, Paxson said accepting the memo’s terms “would restrict academic freedom and undermine the autonomy of Brown’s governance” and that it would directly go against an agreement that Brown signed with the administration in July.
U.S. President Donald Trump has sought to eradicate what he labels as left-wing extremist thought from U.S. universities, which he has accused of fomenting anti-American and antisemitic movements.
In the memo titled “A Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” the administration asked the nine elite colleges to cap international undergraduate enrollment at 15%, ban the use of race or sex in hiring and admissions and define genders based on biology. Last week, MIT became the first of the nine elite universities to decline signing the compact.
Schools that pursue “models and values” beyond those outlined in the memo could “forgo federal benefits,” the memo reads, while institutions that comply could be rewarded.
The administration has canceled federal contracts worth millions of dollars with numerous schools as a means of pressuring them to drastically change their admissions and hiring policies, among other issues. Courts have ordered many of the federal cuts be restored.
Brown, located in Providence, Rhode Island, signed an agreement with the administration in July, agreeing to pay $50 million over a decade to support workforce development in its home state. In exchange, the administration restored the university’s federal funding for medical and health sciences.
Paxson, in her Wednesday letter, wrote that the July agreement Brown signed “expressly affirms the government’s lack of authority to dictate our curriculum or the content of academic speech – a principle that is not reflected in the Compact.”
Liz Huston, a spokeswoman for the White House, said in a written statement that “President Trump is committed to restoring academic excellence and common sense at our higher education institutions. Any university that joins this historic effort will help to positively shape America’s future.”
Over the weekend, Trump wrote on social media that his administration would keep cracking down on schools that “continue to illegally discriminate based on race or sex” and that he was inviting all institutions “to enter into a forward looking Agreement with the Federal Government to help bring about the Golden Age of Academic Excellence in Higher Education.”
The White House said it had not reached out to any other schools regarding such an agreement, aside from the elite nine universities.
(Reporting by Brad Brooks; Additional reporting by Jim Oliphant; Editing by David Gregorio)
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