31–40 of 203 posts
Is there any precedent in US history for what the administration is asking of the nations top universities? Incredible they have to deal with this.
https://speechfirst.org/case/title-ix/
One example of many: it would have been a punishable offense to refuse to use someone's preferred pronouns.
This seems like a reasonable response by MIT. I’m struggling to understand where the core disagreement lies though. Would someone who is opposed to this “compact” care to explain their view? I’m not interested in baseless name-calling (“fascist” etc) but I am interested in cogent reasoning. I didn’t read the compact itself, but I did read the wikipedia article about it, and it seems to be a very positive set of crite…
I did read the Compact and had a similar response: "This all sounds very reasonable". I think the negative reaction to it is mostly a function of who is pushing it.
This seems like a reasonable response by MIT. I’m struggling to understand where the core disagreement lies though. Would someone who is opposed to this “compact” care to explain their view? I’m not interested in baseless name-calling (“fascist” etc) but I am interested in cogent reasoning. I didn’t read the compact itself, but I did read the wikipedia article about it, and it seems to be a very positive set of crite…
Regardless of what is in the compact, it's important that our educational institutions have independence to run themselves as they see fit. To make funding conditional to a set of demands by the government takes away that independence.
This is why a couple of conservative schools don't accept any sort of federal money. Liberal schools might be considering doing the same.
Otherwise, yes, an independent school can do what they want. If you want to be truly independent, you have to be willing to walk away from the money. Anybody that gives money can attach conditions to it, including the government.
The Compact itself can be found here: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/1... It's short, I ask that you read it before commenting.
It's too bad MIT has taken this stance. I think the Compact is overall an obviously reasonable, good-faith effort to improve universities in the United States. The one area I'd change a bit is the specific mention of "conservative" ideas:
"...purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas."
It's entirely fair because these universities do purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas. But it's not what I'd want in such a document because next time around it could be "liberal" ideas, or "communist" ideas, or...
Everything else seems on the nose. I would hasten to remind you that the threat is not "we'll force you to do this stuff", it is "if you want federal funding, you'll do this stuff". Which seems fine to me. Much of the document is merely trying to actually enforce the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
This seems like a reasonable response by MIT. I’m struggling to understand where the core disagreement lies though. Would someone who is opposed to this “compact” care to explain their view? I’m not interested in baseless name-calling (“fascist” etc) but I am interested in cogent reasoning. I didn’t read the compact itself, but I did read the wikipedia article about it, and it seems to be a very positive set of crite…
> Signatories commit themselves to revising governance structures as necessary to create such an environment, including but not limited to transforming or abolishing institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.
Only conservative ideas receive protected status under this compact. Why? It is objectively false that only conservative ideas are punished, belittled, and met with threats of violence on the relevant college campuses.
> Such policies also shall recognize that academic freedom is not absolute, and universities shall adopt policies that prevent discriminatory, threatening, harassing, or other behaviors that abridge the rights of other members of the university community.
Read strictly, this clause implies no protests or demonstrations of any kind of a college campus, including e.g., the annual pro-life demonstrations at my alma mater (which occasionally became violent, by the way). It is naive to imagine this clause will be enforced equitably.
> Signatories commit to rigorous, good faith, empirical assessment of a broad spectrum of viewpoints among faculty, students, and staff at all levels and to sharing the results of such assessments with the public; and to seek such a broad spectrum of viewpoints not just in the university as a whole, but within every field, department, school, and teaching unit.
Every biology department must hire creationist professors. Every astronomy department must hire flat-earthers. Every geology department must hire young-earthers. Every medical school must hire germ-theory-skeptical epidemiologists.
And across departments, too: we need mathematicians who believe in Fomenko’s new chronology and ultrafinitist historians.
I assume you’ll argue these are hyperbole, but I’ve encountered such people during my time in academia.
> Signatories acknowledge that the freedom to debate requires conditions of civility. Civility includes protections against institutional punishment or individual harassment for one’s views.
So, logically, a professor of classical philosophy must entertain homophobic assertions about Plato and Aristotle, and cannot sanction in any way the student interrupting class in this fashion.
I also see that a Christian student could occupy a Hillel building (a Jewish student organization) and could not be legally removed or administratively sanctioned for doing so under this section of the policy.
You might argue that these fall under the ban on “heckler’s veto” defined later in this paragraph, but strictly speaking they don’t. The “heckler’s veto” ban applies to the hypothetical Jewish students attempting to convince the Christian student to leave.
> Signatories shall adopt policies prohibiting incitement to violence, including calls for murder or genocide or support for entities designated by the U.S. government as terrorist organizations.
Recall how NSPM-7 recently expanded the definition of “terrorist organization” to include groups that display some of the following “common threads”: “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”
How any Islamic student group, no matter how explicitly pro-Israel and pro-Christianity, survives this definition is an real question.
EDIT: To those who believe this example is unjustified, please see https://www.christianity.com/newsletters/breakpoint/understa... for a typical American Evangelical opinion on the status of Islam.
> The university shall impartially and vigorously enforce all rights and restrictions it adopts with respect to free speech and expression.
As we have seen, this concluding sentence is contradicted by the whole of the policy that appears before it.
How is that for a breakdown? I didn’t say “fascist“ once, may I collect my five pounds?
Remember, fascism is not an ideology or philosophical idea. It is a system of government. Gaining control of academia is a core part of this system. I applaud MIT for standing up to this. I hope the other universities involved also resist. We'll see.
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Wikipedia: "Fascism is characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived interest of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy"
- Dictatorial leader - President Trump tries to push things through Executive Orders, which are supposed to go through Congress. And that one guy in his admin said he has "plenary" (I guess meaning total, unquestioned) authority
- Centralized autocracy - "Autocracy is a form of government in which absolute power is held by one person, known as an autocrat. It includes absolute monarchy and all forms of dictatorship, while it is contrasted with democracy and other forms of free government" - Same thing
- Militarism - The President has deployed National Guard and militarized ICE agents to American cities under the guise of improving public safety. The real reason is to terrorize non-white people and prepare for interfering with or preventing the next election. He also attacked ships from another country without any just cause.
- Forcible suppression of opposition - I believe right now Trump's administration is going after an Attorney General? ICE has also been detaining and physically harming people who try to (legally) film them. There is certainly more suppression I'm forgetting and more in the pipeline. The Republican party also generally seemed okay with violence against Democratic Party elected officials. I seem to recall violence against Nancy Pelosi's husband went un-remarked-upon.
- Belief in a natural social hierarchy - I don't have pull quotes from elected officials but there is a lot of white supremacy in the Republican party and among their voter base. They have ideas like "America First" where, when you dig into it, "American" means "pure-blood white person". They also seem to broadly look down on women, gay people, transgender people, the usual suspects. Patriachy is popular among the right, they'll say things like wives should submit to their husbands, women would categorically be happier as stay-at-home mothers, and some have opposed women's right to vote.
- Subordination of individual interests for the perceived interest of the nation or race - We are being asked to give up our civil rights, as well as our free trade (via tariffs that nobody wants) for some nonsense efforts from the President and the Republican Party.
- Strong regimentation of society and the economy - Kind of a restatement but again - Tariffs, deploying the military and the police without warrants against citizens and residents who have not been properly accused of any crime, yada yada
Earlier quoted context omitted.
While the current climate is not comparable, I find the actions and general attitude of the current US government similar to that during the McCarthy era. Which led me to this very interesting article from 1965: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1965/6/17/the-university-... In it, the author described the attacks on specific personnels and public villainification of Harvard. More tellingly though, the author wrote t…
Assuming lack of knowledge is the reason authoritarian tendencies show up periodically dismisses the fact that a lot of people think it’s a good thing. There were neo nazis right after wwii. They didn’t forget — they wanted it.
Is there any precedent in US history for what the administration is asking of the nations top universities? Incredible they have to deal with this.
Yes, the Biden Administration's promulgation of a Title IX interpretation that, among other things, would have compelled certain kinds of speech: https://speechfirst.org/case/title-ix/ One example of many: it would have been a punishable offense to refuse to use someone's preferred pronouns.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, the Biden Administration's promulgation of a Title IX interpretation that, among other things, would have compelled certain kinds of speech: https://speechfirst.org/case/title-ix/ One example of many: it would have been a punishable offense to refuse to use someone's preferred pronouns.
Are you injured if you can't misgender someone?
You may not see the harm in this particular instance, but establishing "we'll just force them to say it and punish them if they don't" as a tool in any government's toolbox is a very, very bad idea.
This seems like a reasonable response by MIT. I’m struggling to understand where the core disagreement lies though. Would someone who is opposed to this “compact” care to explain their view? I’m not interested in baseless name-calling (“fascist” etc) but I am interested in cogent reasoning. I didn’t read the compact itself, but I did read the wikipedia article about it, and it seems to be a very positive set of crite…
In other words, trans people can't use the bathrooms matching their gender identity.
> Calls for ideological diversity, not just at the campus level, "but within every field, department, school, and teaching unit."
In other words, every academic department is susceptible to ideological litmus tests defined by the state. If Trump's white house feels like your Computer Science department has too many Democrats in it, you fix that problem or you lose your funding.
> Restricts student visas to foreign students who ... "are ... supportive of, American and Western values."
In other words, another ideological litmus test, only in this case the consequence is that foreign students can be thrown out at will.
> Requires that "university employees, in their capacity as university representatives" as well as all colleges, faculties, departments, and other academic units "abstain from actions or speech relating to societal and political events"
In other words, tenured faculty lose their right to free speech.