Statement by the Vanderbilt AAUP Executive Committee on the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education”

October 6, 2025

On October 2nd, Vanderbilt was among nine universities “invited” to sign a “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” with the federal government. The Compact, however, is a threat. It aims to control nearly every aspect of university operations, from admissions, hiring, tuition, and grades, to controlling the teaching and research content of academic units, and enforcing a strict, binary definition of “male” and “female” according to reproductive function. Furthermore, compliance with the dictates of the ten-page Compact is subject to ongoing, annual review by the Justice Department, and non-compliance would be punished with loss of access to student loan grant programs, federal contracts, research funding, approval of visas, and tax exemption.

The Compact’s attempted coercion continues a pattern of ongoing political interference into higher education. It contravenes federal law and deeply held institutional and professional principles. The Compact undermines the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by characterizing the recognition of demographic diversity as discrimination. Meanwhile, its requirements to police foreign students’ activities for alignment with “American and Western values,” monitor or abolish programs deemed to hold anti-conservative bias, and restrictive definitions of sex and gender would be all too discriminatory—and destructive—in their effects. The Compact’s requirement for protection against the “belittling” of “conservative ideas” in the name of fostering a “vibrant marketplace of ideas on campus” represents an untenable subversion of academic freedom, and is readily abusable. Demands about admissions, use of standardized tests, and preference for specific programs of study directly flout the shared governance rights of faculty. Under the heading of “institutional neutrality,” the Compact also violates faculty rights by severely restricting permissible individual expression within and outside of the university. Many of these requirements would expose Vanderbilt to massive litigation, squandering institutional resources and energies. But more broadly, it is difficult to interpret the Compact as anything other than a direct and concerted assault on academic freedom, and thus on the core identity of our institution and on the role of higher education in American society.

We cannot sincerely ask our students to “dare to grow” in the environment of fear and mistrust that this Compact would produce in our community. Academic freedom and institutional autonomy require that decisions about university operations and teaching and research in academic units be jointly made by the faculty in accordance with procedures of shared governance set by our university. We join the AAUP National Leadership in urging the Board of Trust, Chancellor Diermeier, Provost Raver, and the Vanderbilt leadership to completely reject this Trump loyalty oath and any other that seeks to commandeer Vanderbilt’s institutional autonomy. Additionally, we insist on meaningful shared governance on campus and consultation with faculty regarding the Compact.

The Vanderbilt Chapter of the AAUP stands with the national AAUP, the AAUP chapters of the other targeted universities, and members of the Vanderbilt community in opposing the Compact and demanding that our administration do so as well. We encourage our colleagues at Vanderbilt – students, faculty, staff, and alumni – to join us in signing a petition started by graduate student workers at Vanderbilt. Faculty who are interested in joining our efforts to organize a response can write to us at vanderbiltaaup@gmail.com.