Professors protest billionaire behind Trump education compact

Over 70 professors and students across East Coast universities rallied outside a Midtown investment firm on Friday in protest of its owner’s contributions to President Donald Trump’s education compact, which financially incentivizes schools to meet his political demands. 

The demonstration, organized by the American Association of University Professors, was one of over 100 protests across U.S. campuses as part of the National Day of Action for Higher Education. AAUP members from NYU, Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania gathered at the Apollo Global Management headquarters at 11 a.m., demanding that its CEO Marc Rowan — a Trump donor who helped author the education compact — refrain from making decisions that affect university policies.

Around six speakers began the protest by criticizing billionaires for turning colleges into “ideological battlegrounds,” while roughly 10 police officers surrounded the demonstration. They held signs reading “No Compact, No Loyalty Oath, No Oligarchs” while chanting “We need teachers, we need books! We need the money the billionaires took” before dispersing around 1 p.m. Earlier that week, Apollo sent letters to around 1,000 employees, advising them to work from home ahead of the demonstrations. 

“We don’t want billionaires to put their hands on our institutions — and that would go for NYU as well,” CAS professor and AAUP member Andrew Ross told WSN. “You have no business tampering with our universities and posing your particular values.”

The protest comes just over a month after the Trump administration invited a small group of universities to sign a compact that financially rewards those who end diversity hiring, freeze tuition for five years and cap international undergraduate enrollment at 15%. He opened it up to all universities less than two weeks later, and at least two colleges have volunteered to sign the agreement so far. Seven of the nine colleges Trump initially contacted have rejected the compact. 

In October, AAUP members held a town hall at NYU, calling for the university and other institutions to publicly denounce the compact. It also proposed that professors and students coordinate the “biggest mass-organizing event for higher education” in U.S. history on May Day 2026. 

Rowan, a billionaire and Penn alum, contributed to a yearslong coalition that prompted Trump to sign an executive order in 2019 that classified “targeting of the state of Israel” as antisemitic, a move that predominantly targeted pro-Palestinian protesters on college campuses. NYU adopted the definition in 2020 as part of a settlement in an antisemitism case, and in 2024, updated its conduct guidelines to cite “code words, like ‘Zionist’” as a type of speech that could violate nondiscrimination policies.        

Trump’s antisemitism task force said in March that it would investigate NYU and cut its funding if violations were found, although no apparent probe has taken place. On the day of the protest, Cornell University agreed to pay $60 million after the Trump administration accused it of implementing diversity-related practices in admissions and university programming. As part of the settlement, Cornell will also survey its Jewish students annually on campus climate and safety.

“It’s clear that faculty, students and staff will continue to show up in ever larger numbers in order to defend the free pursuit of knowledge and advance a vision of higher-ed as a public good,” CAS professor and AAUP member David Markus told WSN. “Ultimately, administrators will need to decide whether they are committed to such a vision, or whether they are collaborators in the destruction of the institutions.”

Over a dozen students from NYU’s chapter of Students for a Democratic Society also organized a walkout Friday at noon, demanding that the university explicitly reject the compact and end its “compliance with the Trump administration.” They also criticized NYU Langone Health’s decision to deny gender-affirming care to two transgender patients following Trump’s first wave of executive orders in January.  

“NYU will do anything to please the current administration because the university continues to be motivated by profit over people,” SDS said in a statement. “If NYU’s leadership doesn’t stand up to this compact, then they will cement the university’s position in history: As fascism crept into higher education, NYU was too cowardly to take a stand.” 

Natalie Deoragh contributed reporting.

Contact Leena Ahmed and Julian Torres at news@nyunews.com.

This story Professors protest billionaire behind Trump education compact appeared first on Washington Square News.

Over 70 professors and students across East Coast universities rallied outside a Midtown investment firm on Friday in protest of its owner’s contributions to President Donald Trump’s education compact, which financially incentivizes schools to meet his political demands.  The demonstration, organized by the American Association of University Professors, was one of over 100 protests across…