University Mutual Academic Defense Compact

In late March, the Rutgers University faculty senate voted to support a resolution calling for a “Mutual Academic Defense Compact” among the 18 universities of the Big 10 Athletic conference, to protect universities against attacks from the Trump administration. On April 10, the University of Massachusetts Amherst faculty voted on an essentially similar resolution, calling on all public and land grant universities to join.

Neither compact has small representation. The Big 10 compact would cover over 600,000 students at the massive public universities included, and the Public and Land Grant compact proposed at U Mass would include 250 institutions with over a million faculty and nearly 7 million students.

The essentials of the resolutions are:

1. In the spirit of Article 5 of NATO, if one university in the compact is attacked, all are attacked.

2. Participating universities will contribute meaningful legal, financial, and strategic resources to the compact.

3. The types of actions can include, but are not limited to: “Legal representation and countersuit actions; strategic public communication; amicus briefs and expert testimony; legislative advocacy and coalition-building; related topical research as needed.”

The idea has attracted considerable press coverage. 

To date, as far as I have found, the following university faculties have also voted in favor of such resolutions (big shout out to Michael Yarborough from John Jay College for tracking on BlueSky):

Big 10 Universities:

• University of Michigan 

• University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

• Michigan State University 

• Ohio State University 

• Indiana University

• University of Nebraska 

• University of Washington

• University of Maryland 

• University of Minnesota 

• Pennsylvania State University 

• University of Oregon

• University of Wisconsin 

• Northwestern University (first private university to sign on)

Other Universities:

• SUNY University Faculty Senate

• CUNY Faculty Senate

• University of Arizona

• Colorado State University 

• University of New Mexico

• University of Massachusetts Lowell 

• SUNY Plattsburgh

• CUNY Hunter College

Iowa and Purdue took up the Big 10 resolution but it failed to pass their faculty senates. USC voted yesterday on the Mutual Defense Compact resolution, but it is unclear whether it passed.

As a faculty resolution, this has no binding effect on the university administration to adopt it, and it is unclear whether public universities can legally do so. At Ohio State, a spokesman for the university said “that while it "is committed to shared governance" it is "not legally permissible for the university to participate in a common defense fund."“ Still, it is worth faculty signalling their clear intentions to university leadership, even if the described Mutual Defense Compact has legal imperfections. As astrophysics professor John Nousek said at Penn State “The administration will have a need to interpret this and make sure that any actions that are taken are legal and appropriate and all the rest of it. But what falls to us is to make a statement of what we believe, who we are and what we think Penn State University stands for.”

Things can move slow in academics, and hesitancy is endemic. I still smile at the closing of “Straight Man” where an entire English department manages to lock themselves in during a long faculty meeting. But I am very happy to see this spirit of pushing back taking off. Universities are stronger together.