Campus activists push for anti-Trump ‘mutual defense compact’ of major universities

A group of universities, many of which receive significant federal funding, could soon rebel against President Donald Trump’s executive orders clamping down on progressive initiatives in public education, if campus activists have their way.

Members of a Rutgers University advisory board recently passed a resolution for establishing a “Mutual Defense Compact” to pool legal and policy resources of the member institutions within the Big Ten Academic Alliance in opposition to the Trump administration’s orders. The resolution calls on Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway to spearhead the effort and to “take a leading role in convening a summit of Big Ten academic and legal leadership to initiate the implementation of this Compact.”

One professor who spoke with Fox News Digital quipped in response that “the left has discovered free speech.”

“These are the same people who had who would punish other members of the university community for using the wrong pronouns for so-called microaggressions,” Dr. Kevin Jon Williams, a cardiovascular sciences professor at Temple University, told Fox News Digital in an interview. 

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“They banned conservative speakers and engage in violence to stop conservative speakers from coming to campus, they would rescind offers to prospective applicants who had been accepted based on someone finding something they had done maybe when they were 11 or 12 years old,” Williams said. “I mean, they were totally vicious and totally against any sort of freedom of expression.”

Williams was one of the professors the measure – formally titled the Resolution to Establish a Mutual Defense Compact for the Universities of the Big Ten Academic Alliance in Defense of Academic Freedom, Institutional Integrity, and the Research Enterprise – was initially sent to before it was passed by the Rutgers University Senate.

The resolution states that “recent and escalating politically motivated actions by governmental bodies pose a significant threat to the foundational principles of American higher education, including the autonomy of university governance, the integrity of scientific research, and the protection of free speech,” and as such, the “Trump administration and aligned political actors have signaled a willingness to target individual institutions with legal, financial, and political incursion designed to undermine their public mission, silence dissenting voices, and/or exert improper control over academic inquiry.”

The defense-compact resolution was drafted by the Big Ten Academic Alliance, an organization composed of more than a dozen universities of the Big Ten Conference, which includes both public and private institutions. Originally known as the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, the alliance was established to foster research collaboration and shared resources.

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“I don’t think they’re hypocrites, I think they’re liars,” Williams added. “I think what they’re doing is they’re hiding behind the cloak of free speech, which they do not believe in, to try to maintain their control over the university environment. It’s a ploy. It’s a strategy, and we should not take them seriously when they say that they’re interested in free speech, because they demonstrated that they are most certainly opposed to free speech.”

Under the proposal, participating universities would contribute to a shared defense fund to provide immediate support for what they determine are legal and political infringements. It’s unclear which universities in the Big Ten may support the resolution.

The resolution will also “be transmitted to the leadership of all Big Ten universities and their respective governing boards and shared governance bodies,” while the president of Rutgers University “take a leading role in convening a summit of Big Ten academic and legal leadership to initiate the implementation of this Compact.”

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“This is a remarkably politically partisan document,” said Williams, who is also a fellow for the conservative Do No Harm medical advocacy group. “This is a broad brush condemnation of the Trump administration. Now, for sure, by free speech, they absolutely have the right to do that, but if they do that, they cease being nonpartisan, and I would bring their tax-exempt status into question.”

Many Big Ten universities have historically received federal grants for research from agencies like the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy.

The resolution comes at a time when the Trump administration has taken a critical look at universities receiving federal funding. In March, the administration revoked $400 million in federal grants to Columbia University, citing concerns over antisemitism on campus following the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. This action was part of a broader initiative scrutinizing elite universities for alleged civil rights violations, particularly toward Jewish students.

The administration has also shifted its focus to eliminating universities’ diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives to align with Trump’s executive orders while also banning biological males from women’s sports. The Department of Education announced investigations into over 50 colleges for alleged racial discrimination, challenging race-based admissions and scholarships in February.

Trump also signed an executive order significantly reducing the size of the Department of Education in March. While the department’s operations are scaled back, it retains control over critical functions such as Title I funding, Pell grants, student loans and special education funding.