The Trump administration’s aggressive “compact” does not arrive in a vacuum; it lands on a university system already in a state of crisis, beset by internal and external pressures that the new plan expertly exploits. The proposal is so potent precisely because it taps into pre-existing public anxieties about the cost, purpose, and politics of higher education.
For years, universities have faced a barrage of criticism from all sides. The public is deeply concerned about skyrocketing tuition and student debt. There is a widespread perception, particularly on the right, that campuses are hotbeds of “woke” ideology and intolerance for dissenting views. Debates over free speech and affirmative action have been simmering for decades.
The Trump administration’s compact cleverly weaponizes every one of these existing vulnerabilities. It addresses the cost crisis with a tuition freeze. It addresses the free speech crisis with a demand to promote conservative ideas. It addresses the “woke” crisis by demanding the scrapping of certain departments. It addresses the affirmative action debate by banning it outright.
In this sense, the compact is a masterful work of political opportunism. It takes all the simmering resentments and anxieties about higher education and channels them into a single, coherent, and aggressive policy document. It presents the administration as the only force willing to take on a corrupt and broken system that the public has lost faith in.
This makes the task of opposing the compact much more difficult. Universities cannot simply defend the status quo, because the status quo is already unpopular. To effectively fight back, they must not only critique the administration’s authoritarian solution but also acknowledge the real problems that made their sector so vulnerable to this attack in the first place.