The Trump regime has presented a small number of universities with a proposed “compact.” As the Chronicle describes it, it’s “a sort of deal in which the universities would make a series of commitments in admissions, speech on campus, hiring, and other areas, in return for vaguely defined ‘federal benefits.'” Setting aside questions of legality–elsewhere, Genevieve Lakier argues that it amounts to an unconstitutional condition–one might well find a number of its provisions either salutary or unobjectionable. They are, as the regime’s letter offering the deal suggests, not the only “models and values” universities might pursue. It’s a point the regime appears to mean in a threatening but also inconsistent manner; after all, the regime and its followers routinely applaud universities that offer the right sort (so to speak) of alternate models to a conventional, institutionally neutral, free–speech–friendly university. Institutional pluralists, who think not all universities need look exactly the same, take the concept more seriously. Regardless, it should be appreciated that no shortage of academics across a fairly wide range of political views support, are positively inclined toward, or are at least open to things like: blind admissions according to objective criteria such as an entrance test; academic freedom emphasizing viewpoint diversity; nondiscrimination in hiring; institutional neutrality; opposition to grade inflation; actually enforcing its disciplinary rules, rather than sometimes ignoring and sometimes retreating on them; and controlling burgeoning tuition costs.
To be sure, other provisions are inconsistent with a staid, conventional, independent, academic-freedom-loving university model. Its definition of harassment is overbroad. Its provision requiring, in the name of the marketplace of ideas, actions aimed at “institutional units” that “belittle…conservative ideas” is overly vague. And so on. But academics who, from within insulated common spaces in faculty lounges or (more likely) on social media, confidently assert that the compact is not only unlawful but obviously terrible should consider more strongly the possibility that not only are its terms politically popular, so that rejecting it will be perilous even if the regime omits the usual orgy of retaliation, but they also appeal in principle to a substantial percentage of the academy itself.
So why should the universities nonetheless reject the compact? Consider the tale of Eisenhower’s sword. No, I’m not referring to the greatest heavy metal band that never existed. (Pete Hegseth is no Eisenhower. But he is fond of RaHoWa-esque body art. He might consider adopting “Eisenhower’s Sword” as the name of a band for USO events.) I’m talking quite literally about Eisenhower’s sword–a gift from Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands that is kept at the Eisenhower Museum in Abilene. Per the Times:
President Trump wanted a gift for King Charles.
Ahead of his state visit to Britain last month, the administration began looking for an artifact relating to President Dwight D. Eisenhower that the president could give the British monarch — a sword perhaps, or something else that spoke to Eisenhower’s role as the supreme commander of the Allied forces in World War II.
[A]n administration official approached the [Eisenhower Library about the sword]. But the library declined to release it or any other original artifact in its collection, on the grounds that they are the property of the U.S. government, which the library is obligated by law to preserve for the American public.
Instead, Mr. Trump wound up giving King Charles a replica sword. And this week, the director of the Eisenhower library, Todd Arrington, was forced out of his job.
Much, much more can be found here, at a Substack page by a writer with expertise on the National Archives and Records Foundation, which is involved with the presidential museums. The longer story, to be both fair and clear, suggests other–but not stronger–grounds for official discontent with Arrington, while noting that those grounds appear to have been more of an opportunity than an actual cause. In a secretive, vindictive, “find me the person, then we can worry about the crime” regime, the sources who believe the regime “began to look for an opportunity to remove Arrington” after he declined to violate the law and hand over the sword are not exactly very far out on a limb.
Eisenhower’s sword is why universities would be foolish to accept this or any other compact from the Trump regime–even if one likes some of its policies or, indeed, thinks they are precisely what universities ought to be doing. Trusting the present government to honor the terms of this or any other deal is as sensible as trusting a Nigerian prince to return your advance payment. Any conditions here, even if one is in general sympathy with their vision of the university, should be treated less as a foundation for reform and more as the first step toward future scrutiny, surveillance, tendentiously claimed violations, and new and sudden demands. It’s not a basis for future relations; it’s an invitation to the universities to supply a leash.
One might not always say this. Some governments, of whatever party, may well tend to keep many or most of their promises. (Nevertheless, it’s time for universities to reexamine the extent to which they have spent the postwar period selling their independence for the sake of funding that always carried conditions that always tended to increase, and ask whether they might be better off being poorer and freer. The current crew at the Department of Education, who are less attached to any constructive vision than to “let’s break-Cracker-Barrel”-style nihilism, only make the need more evident.) But Donald Trump is the acknowledged master of the art of the deal, provided that mastery is defined as involving promiscuous lying, cheating, and the breaking of promises. You could practically write a voluminous, carefully-reported book about it. And, in a kind of the-king’s-one-body way, he not only sees no difference between himself as an individual and the presidency; he sees no difference between himself, the presidency, and everything in the care and keeping of the United States as a whole. In government as in business, the concept of a fiduciary is utterly alien to him. It makes perfect sense that if a government or quasi-governmental entity owns a historical keepsake, he thinks he ought to be able to give it away–and that he will punish anyone who tells him otherwise.
Universities are positively overflowing with Eisenhower’s swords. These treasures are just sitting there, waiting for a demand to hand them over, and the schools’ administrators are just waiting for their Todd Arrington moment–and frankly far less likely to measure up to it than Arrington did. It may be that some of these policies should be pursued, or re-emphasized, on their own merit. But the offer itself should be rejected.