Photo: WBZ NewsRadio
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (WBZ NewsRadio) — The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has rejected the Trump administration’s proposed compact of demands tied to preferential access to federal funds.
In a letter sent Friday to U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon, MIT President Sally Kornbluth said the university’s values and practices “meet or exceed many standards outlined in the document.”
The White House sent a letter to MIT and several other universities earlier this month, asking them to sign a compact upholding their commitment to President Donald Trump’s vision for U.S. colleges and universities.
The “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” asks colleges to stop considering race and gender in admissions, accept the government’s definition of gender and change policies that “punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas,” the Associated Press reported. It also requires that colleges cap international student enrollment and freeze tuition for U.S. students for five years.
Signing the compact would come with priority access to federal research funds and “increased overhead payments where feasible,” the AP reported.
MIT is the first university to officially reject the offer.
In Kornbluth’s letter, she writes that MIT “prides itself on rewarding merit” and admits students “regardless of their family’s finances.” She also writes that “we value free expression,” and that students who disagree “must engage respectfully” with each other.
“We freely choose these values because they’re right, and we live by them because they support our mission – work of immense value to the prosperity, competitiveness, health and security of the United States,” the letter continues. “And of course, MIT abides by the law.”
Kornbluth added that the university believes the compact is "inconsistent with our core belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone.”
Other colleges that received the letter include Brown University, Dartmouth University, the University of Pennsylvania, Vanderbilt University, the University of Virginia, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas and the University of Arizona.
The administration has previously made demands of other elite universities, including Harvard University.
When Harvard refused the administration’s demands, which included abolishing diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in hiring and admissions, the administration froze $2.7 billion of the university’s federal funding. U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs overturned the funding cuts in September.