Dartmouth will not sign the Trump administration’s higher education compact, College President Sian Leah Beilock wrote in an email to campus today.
The compact, which was sent to the College and eight other universities on Oct. 1, puts forward broad requirements for the College’s admissions and academic policies in exchange for federal funding benefits. It asks universities to limit the enrollment of international students to 15%, limit grade inflation and adopt a binary definition of sex and gender, among other stipulations.
“I do not believe that a compact — with any administration — is the right approach to achieve academic excellence, as it would compromise our academic freedom, our ability to govern ourselves, and the principle that federal research funds should be awarded to the best, most promising ideas,” Beilock wrote.
Beilock wrote that she shared this sentiment with the White House during a call yesterday. Four other schools that had not yet responded were also invited to speak with the Trump administration on Friday, according to the Associated Press.
Of the nine schools initially approached by the Trump administration, Dartmouth is the last Ivy to reject the compact, following Brown University and the University of Pennsylvania. The College’s decision comes after Dartmouth’s Board of Trustees convened in Hanover yesterday and today. It is also two days ahead of the White House’s Oct. 20 deadline for university responses.
Since Oct. 1, Dartmouth’s community broadly expressed trepidation that the compact could threaten academic freedom. Senior vice president for campus life Jennifer Rosales said that the compact would “go against” the College’s “policies and missions” in a convening of Dartmouth Student Government on Oct. 5.
In her response to the White House, Beilock said the College “remain[s] open to other ways to work with the federal government.”
“I welcome further engagement around how we can (a) enhance the long-standing partnership between the federal government and this country’s leading research universities and (b) ensure that higher education stays focused on academic excellence,” Beilock wrote.
In an interview with The Dartmouth, former College President Phil Hanlon said that this was “absolutely the right decision.”
“Congratulations and thanks to President Beilock and the trustees for standing tall,” Hanlon said.
Echoing Beilock, he stressed the importance of preserving the relationship between universities and the federal government.
“I continue to be concerned about the visionary partnership between higher education and the federal government that has been so critical to the U.S. achieving its current position of global leadership,” he said. “It’s really that partnership that has led to incredible economic strength, an educated populace that’s critical to our democracy and the world’s strongest military.”
Beilock’s announcement makes Dartmouth the sixth school to reject the compact, after the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Oct. 10, then Brown, Penn, the University of Southern California, followed by the University of Virginia.
Charlotte Hampton ’26 contributed to reporting.
Iris WeaverBell ’28 is a news reporter. She is from Portland, Ore., and is majoring in economics and minoring in public policy.
