Princeton professor says universities must resist Trump’s compact on higher education: Here's why

Sticks are bad, but sometimes corruption through carrots is worse. Princeton University professor Jan-Werner Müller, writing in The Guardian , argues that the Trump administration’s latest offer to select universities is exactly that, a veiled attempt to trade compliance for privilege. After cutting federal funding earlier this year, the administration is now extending an offer to nine institutions: preferential treatment in grants and the promise of White House access, in exchange for signing a “compact” that would bind them to a set of political conditions. Müller calls it an “offer they cannot refuse,” one that undermines both academic autonomy and constitutional limits on presidential power. At first glance, the proposal gestures towards popular concerns: reducing tuition fees