Washington– WASHINGTON (AP) — The head of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said Friday she “cannot support” White House proposal MIT and eight other universities are being asked to embrace President Donald Trump’s political agenda in exchange for federal funding.
MIT was among the first to express strong opinions both for and against the agreement, which the White House described as providing “multiple positive benefits,” including “large, meaningful federal grants.” University of Texas System leaders said they were honored to invite their flagship university in Austin, but most other universities remained silent while reviewing the document.
In a letter to Trump administration officials, MIT President Sally Kornbluth said MIT disagrees with provisions of the proposal, including some that would limit… Freedom of expression And the independence of the university. She said this conflicts with MIT’s belief that scientific funding should be based on merit alone.
“Therefore, with respect, we cannot support the proposed approach to addressing the issues facing higher education,” Kornbluth said in a letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon and White House officials.
The Higher Education Charter distributed last week requires universities to make a wide range of commitments in line with Trump’s commitment Political agenda On topics from admissions and women’s sports to freedom of expression and student discipline. Universities have been invited to provide “limited, targeted feedback” by 20 October and a decision to be made no later than 21 November.
The other universities that received the 10-page proposal are: Vanderbilt, the University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth College, the University of Southern California, the University of Arizona, Brown University, and the University of Virginia. It was not clear how the schools were chosen or why.
University leaders face enormous pressure to reject the agreement amid opposition from students, faculty, free speech advocates and higher education groups. Leaders of some other universities described it as blackmail. The mayor and city council of Tucson, home to the University of Arizona, have formally opposed the agreement, calling it an “unacceptable act of federal interference.”
Even some conservatives rejected the agreement as a bad approach. Frederick Hess, director of education policy at the American Enterprise Institute, called the matter “deeply problematic” and said the government’s requests had “no basis in law.”
Kornbluth’s letter did not explicitly reject the agreement, but noted that its terms were unenforceable. However, she said MIT does align with some of the values laid out in the deal, including prioritizing merit in admissions and making college accessible to everyone.
MIT was the first to reinstate standardized admissions testing requirements after the COVID-19 pandemic, and accepts students based on their talents, ideas and hard work, Kornbluth said. She added that undergraduate students whose families earn less than $200,000 a year pay nothing for tuition.
“We freely choose these values because they are right, and we live by them because they support our mission,” Kornbluth wrote.
As part of the agreement, the White House asked universities to freeze tuition fees for American students for five years. Those whose endowments exceed $2 million per undergraduate student cannot charge tuition at all to students pursuing “hard science” programs.
It required colleges to require the SAT or ACT for all college applicants and to remove race, gender and other characteristics Admission decisions. Schools that sign on will also have to accept the government’s binary definition of gender and apply it to campus bathrooms and sports teams.
Much of the agreement focuses on promoting conservative views. To make universities a “vibrant marketplace of ideas,” universities must commit to taking steps including “transforming or abolishing institutional units that punish, belittle, and even provoke violence against conservative ideas.”
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