As of Oct. 12, 569 Dartmouth faculty members have signed a petition urging College President Sian Leah Beilock not to sign the Trump administration’s “Compact” for higher education, which would set restrictions on College policies in exchange for funding benefits.
In an email to campus on Oct. 3, Beilock wrote that the College “will never compromise our academic freedom and our ability to govern ourselves.”
“I am deeply committed to Dartmouth’s academic mission and values and will always defend our fierce independence,” she wrote. “You have often heard me say that higher education is not perfect and that we can do better.”
A College spokesperson declined to comment on the petition.
The faculty petition asks that Beilock “refuse all unlawful demands and political threats that would undermine [Dartmouth’s] academic freedom and self-governance.”
“The compact, in attempting to assert state control over admissions, tuition, grades, hiring, teaching, and research, is a direct threat to the beating heart of the university: free inquiry and the pursuit of knowledge,” the petition reads.
During an Oct. 5 Dartmouth Student Government meeting, senior vice president for community and campus life Jennifer Rosales said that “some parts” of the compact “go against some” of the College’s “policies and missions.” During the meeting, students described specific “concerns” with various aspects of the compact.
History professor Pamela Voekel, women’s, gender and sexuality studies professor Molly Geidel, English professor Patricia Stuelke, history professor Bethany Moreton and the Dartmouth American Association of University Professors executive committee authored the petition.
Voekel said her decision to publish the petition was grounded in the “absolute constitutional illegality of any deal being made with the [Trump] administration,” and described the petition as an “egregious attack on First Amendment rights.”
Voekel also noted that the petition “broke a record for the number of signatories on any kind of petition for the last 10 years.” In May, 383 faculty members signed an open letter calling for Beilock to “defend the values and ideals of higher education” after a slew of federal funding cuts.
“This is a way for people to express their absolute support for basic constitutional governance in this country,” Voekel said. Faculty “want to be on the right side of history. They want to be standing up for democratic governance, they want to be standing up for the autonomy of higher education.”
Moreton, who was among the group of faculty and students to circulate the petition, similarly described the compact as “unlawful and unconstitutional.” She said that the Trump administration has identified Dartmouth — and the eight other universities who received the Compact — as a “potential weak link.”
“If they can get this group of carefully selected institutions to sign away legal and constitutional rights, then they can use this small group as proxies to enforce on American higher education itself,” Moreton said.
Faculty members who signed the petition, including biology professor Caitlin Pries, said they see the compact as a “threat” to “academic freedom.”
“[The compact’s terms] were very limiting and very scary,” Pries said. “It is absolutely against the principles of academic freedom that all that higher education aspires to.”
History professor Annelise Orleck, who signed the petition, said that she believes petitions serve to “educate the campus” on where faculty stand, and that their effect “depends on the willingness of President Beilock and her administration to listen to faculty voices.”
“I don’t know that this petition will affect [Beilock’s] decision making, but she’s promised to defend Dartmouth’s fierce independence,” Orleck said. “We’re calling on her to really do that, and we don’t believe it’s possible to do that if she signs the compact.”
Pries said she signed the petition because she believes “there is strength in numbers.”
“One thing is that it is important to show that the faculty are a united front across all of our disparate fields and departments,” Pries said.
In an email statement to The Dartmouth, government professor Sean Westwood, who declined to sign the petition, said that he didn’t sign because petitions are “symbolic gestures with limited impact.”
“Faculty can be more effective by engaging directly with policymakers and decision-makers,” he wrote.
