Vanderbilt students and faculty protest Trump's Higher Ed Compact
Over 300 people participated in a protest on Vanderbilt’s campus against the Trump administration’s Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.
The school has not yet formally signed the agreement, but has signaled it is open to continuing talks with the administration.
A protest was recently held at a major Tennessee university over the possibility of the school signing the Trump administration’s higher education compact.
Over 300 Vanderbilt University students, faculty, and community members gathered on campus on Nov. 5 to protest the Trump administration’s Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.”
The university has not formally signed the agreement, but has signaled it will continue talks with the Trump administration, Campus Reform previously reported.
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The compact would offer funding opportunities to schools in exchange for instituting a number of standards, including protecting free speech, taking action to prevent bias and violence against conservative students, protecting women’s intimate spaces, and more.
The recent demonstration saw protesters descend on the campus carrying signs with slogans such as “Reject the Compact” and “Protect International Students,” the latter referencing limitations the compact would put on the number of international students a school could enroll.
One student seemed to compare the Trump administration to the Nazi regime in Germany, saying, “This isn’t just an olive branch. This is appeasement, and if you’ve ever taken a World War II history class, you know what appeasement does.”
A graduate student also connected fascism to conservative ideology in his criticism of the compact, saying, “I have to talk about the history of fascism. It’s really concerning to me, this idea that I can’t belittle conservative ideas. I need to be able to openly discuss these histories to do my job.”
Prior to the protest, the school’s Faculty Senate and student government released a joint statement opposing the compact, and Vanderbilt Graduate Workers United launched a petition against it, Campus Reform reported.
The petition claims the compact is “about control and power,” and that it would erase “trans, queer and gender non-conforming colleagues” and “limit international colleagues [sic] relations with Vanderbilt.”
”Give in to a bully once,” it states, ”and they’ll keep coming back.”
A school official released a statement after the protest, saying, “We believe free expression and constructive debate are essential to a university’s mission of transformative education and pathbreaking discovery. Members of our community continue to share their thoughts and ideas, which help to inform continued conversation with leaders in government and higher education to restore trust in America’s great research universities.”
All relevant parties have been contacted for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
