Dartmouth faculty denounce Trump admin's higher ed compact as ‘fascist’ and ‘unconstitutional’

More than 575 Dartmouth College professors have signed a petition urging President Sian Leah Beilock to reject the Trump administration’s proposed “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” a federal agreement that would tie university funding to new academic and administrative standards.

The petition accuses the compact of being a “direct threat” to academic freedom, claiming it would place “state control over admissions, tuition, grades, hiring, teaching, and research.” 

Faculty members behind the petition—many of them from the school’s gender and cultural studies departments—warned that signing the agreement would represent an “egregious attack on First Amendment rights,” The Dartmouth reported.

[RELATED: Trump extends compact offer to colleges and universities nationwide]

History professor Pamela Voekel, one of the petition’s authors, said the deal represented the “absolute constitutional illegality of any deal being made with the [Trump] administration,” calling it an “egregious attack on First Amendment rights.” 

Voekel told The Dartmouth that the petition broke a record for faculty signatories in the past decade.

Her co-author, history professor Bethany Moreton, called the compact “unlawful and unconstitutional,” claiming the Trump administration had “identified Dartmouth—and the eight other universities who received the Compact—as a potential weak link.” 

Moreton warned that the deal could allow the administration to “use this small group as proxies to enforce on American higher education itself.”

Meanwhile, conservative students on campus say the outrage is overblown. Dartmouth Conservatives president Jack Coleman told The Dartmouth he “wholeheartedly supports” many of the compact’s “common sense” provisions. 

Coleman added that “the federal government has the ability to put conditions on taxpayer dollars,” saying he would support voluntarily adopting many of the compact’s principles.

[RELATED: Gavin Newsom threatens to ‘instantly’ cut funds from schools that sign Trump’s compact]

Other faculty members, however, described the proposal in extreme terms. One student activist called the compact a “very clearly fascist document” that would “gut” Dartmouth’s women’s, gender, and sexuality studies department.

Government professor Brendan Nyhan went further in an MSNBC op-ed, calling the compact a “devil’s bargain” that would make universities “subservient to the whims of the government.”

Still, proponents of reform argue that universities’ fierce resistance to oversight shows how deeply politicized academia has become. While critics paint the Trump proposal as “authoritarian,” supporters see it as an effort to restore accountability, merit, and intellectual diversity to institutions long dominated by one ideological perspective.

Campus Reform has contacted Dartmouth University for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.