Brown University's Bold Refusal

The compact offered schools like Brown University benefits such as priority access to federal research grants and contracts, increased eligibility for infrastructure, and temporary relief from federal excise taxes for some institutions. But in exchange, the compact required universities to cap international undergraduate enrollment at 15 percent, ban the consideration of race or sex in admission and scholarships, support a “merit-based” system over DEI, and define gender strictly according to a biological criteria. Brown President Paxson wrote to the Education Secretary Linda McMahon that the compact “would restrict academic freedom and undermine the autonomy of Brown’s governance” and that “federal research support must remain tied to the quality and impact of scholarship, not to political conditions.” By turning down this compact, Brown has reaffirmed its stance as an educationally independent institution at the cost of losing financial support from the government. While many institutions all want to maintain their educational independence, the only universities that declined the compact were Brown, MIT, and UPenn – the main reason being their financial dependence on federal funding. Universities depend on billions of dollars of federal grants from agencies such as the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation to keep their laboratories running, paying researchers, and allowing students to complete their studies. Although other institutions may not have the financial capability to reject the compact, they are still waiting to see how the situation develops by postponing public decisions until court rules, since parts of the compact will likely be challenged by Ivy-league institutions such as Brown that have more donations from alumni or private corporations and are not fully reliant on government funding. Furthermore, there are ex i s t i n g divisions w i t h i n the instit u t i o n s t h e m - selves as there are some who strongly support a “meritbased” system and others who embrace DEI. Universities do not want to offend one side or another. As a private Ivy-League university however, The compact continues to carry out the logic behind the Executive Order 14173 issued by the Trump Administration, which sets out to eliminate all federal DEI programs and restore “fairness” by making hiring and education system “merit-based”, framing DEI programs as “illegal preferences” and stating that all individuals must be treated strictly as individuals, instead of members of groups. The Trump administration’s goal is to restore this idea of “fairness” by using financial motivations to make school policies align with the Executive Order. However, tying money to educational freedom is detrimental because it transforms learning and research into political bargaining chips, rather than pursuits of truth.

If funding depends upon agreeing with those currently in power, professors might avoid controversial topics, and students might hear only one side of multifaceted issues. Over time, this cultivates a culture of self-censorship and conformity, not curiosity or discovery, and education stops being the process of expanding our understanding of the world but about pleasing whoever is in power. The consequences of the compact reach far beyond Brown’s campus, threatening to destroy the boundaries that separate academic inquiry from political authority. If many universities are forced to sign the proposal, it risks normalizing a system in which access to federal research funds is directly related to ideological conformity. Moreover, the banning of race and sex as factors in admissions and hiring could reverse decades of progress toward inclusion. For high schools like Lawrenceville, the effects may seem indirect for now, but they will become profound. Since students from Lawrenceville will apply to the very same universities now deciding whether to accept or reject the compact, Lawrenceville students will face new challenges in navigating admission choices. If universities were to reject diversity-based admission and ideology, then elite prep schools like Lawrenceville might also have to develop new imperatives in how they redefine “excellence” and prepare students for a different approach to college admissions. In the long term, Brown’s decision is a reminder that education must remain subject to intellectual independence rather than to political expedience.