Professors criticize Trump compact at town hall

Professors across East Coast universities called for institutions to reject President Donald Trump’s contract offering “multiple positive benefits” to schools that meet a series of his political demands at an American Association of University Professors town hall at NYU’s Cantor Film Center on Tuesday.

At the event, held by the New York Metro Coalition for Higher Education, five panelists addressed an audience of over 100 students and faculty, including AAUP members from NYU, Columbia University and Harvard University. Speakers said that while many universities have withstood demands from the Trump administration thus far, more aggressive action is needed to ensure academic freedom. 

The meeting comes after the White House invited all higher education institutions to join a compact that financially rewards universities that end diversity hiring, freeze tuition for five years and cap international undergraduate enrollment at 15%, among other demands. 

CAS professor and NYU AAUP president Zachary Samalin told WSN that the university is not taking a strong stance against Trump’s federal funding cuts. He added that administrators often discourage researchers from using diversity, equity and inclusion-related phrases to avoid being targeted.

“Ideally, they would have sued the federal government for unconstitutionally discriminating against certain forms of research and made a commitment to fund such research on their own — but that isn’t at all how they’ve responded,” Samalin said. “That will have a corrosive effect on research at NYU, which is just what the Trump administration intends.” 

NYU administrators have said the university is cutting budgets in areas such as faculty bonuses and student life to ensure its research funding is supported. 

After the main panel, audience members — most of whom were professors — split into interest groups to discuss research funding threats, labor issues, shared governance, off-campus alliances and free speech on campus.

In his speech, AAUP president Todd Wolfson criticized what he called a “corporatization” of universities and cited the heightened presence of law and immigration enforcement on college campuses. He applauded seven colleges that rejected Trump’s compact earlier this month, when it was only offered to a small selection of schools, and partially attributed the decisions to student and faculty organizing. 

“Our job is to get every university in the country to follow suit,” Wolfson said. “We have to make any university that signs that compact a pariah.”

Wolfson was joined on stage by Higher Education Labor United executive director Ian Gavigan, free speech attorney Ramya Krishnan, constitutional rights attorney Astha Phokarel and Assemblymember Claire Valdez. Throughout the panel, speakers also called for greater protections of non-citizen students and faculty, as well as those involved with pro-Palestinian protests on campus, citing heightened scrutiny from the Trump administration.

Gavigan said during the panel that universities should leverage their existing union structures to help build a larger national movement focused on academic freedom, job security and affordability. He also suggested that faculty members make May Day 2026 the “biggest mass-organizing event for higher education in the history of this country.”

“We would be remiss if we didn’t recognize the institutions that we have, and leverage them to articulate demands,” Gavigan said in his speech. “What we’re doing here, with the Metro coalition, is building a model that the rest of the country can look toward and learn from.”

Speakers encouraged students and faculty to protest the Trump administration’s compact on Nov. 7, a national day of action for higher education, outside the New York City’s Apollo Global Management headquarters — an equity firm owned by billionaire and co-author of the compact Marc Rowan. NYU AAUP, along with the national chapter, will join the American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association at the demonstration.

NYU AAUP, along with four other plaintiffs, won a monthslong lawsuit against the Trump administration last month. The complaint, initially filed in March, argued that efforts to deport non-citizen students and faculty with pro-Palestinian views violate the First Amendment. 

Earlier this year, Trump’s antisemitism task force named NYU as one of 10 universities to be investigated for religious discrimination, threatening to “cut off funding” if violations are found, although no apparent investigation has taken place. Around two weeks later, the Department of Education also began investigating NYU, along with 51 universities, for an “illegal” DEI partnership in its Ph.D. programs. 

“The compact’s intention is to stoke fear,” CAS professor and AAUP member David Markus said. “It backs schools into a position in which they are compelled to betray their own missions, which should primarily be about teaching, learning and research.”

Contact Leena Ahmed at lahmed@nyunews.com.

This story Professors criticize Trump compact at town hall appeared first on Washington Square News.

Professors across East Coast universities called for institutions to reject President Donald Trump’s contract offering “multiple positive benefits” to schools that meet a series of his political demands at an American Association of University Professors town hall at NYU’s Cantor Film Center on Tuesday. At the event, held by the New York Metro Coalition for…