MIT’s Jewish president rejects Trump’s offer of ‘priority’ funding in exchange for policy changes

MIT President Sally Kornbluth testifies before the House Education and Workforce Committee on Dec. 5, 2023 Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

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(JTA) — The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Jewish president, Sally Kornbluth, became the first university leader to reject the Trump administration’s offer to adopt a policy deal in exchange for funding benefits.

The administration extended its proposal, titled the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” to nine universities this month that it said were “good actors.” The deal would require the schools to cap international student enrollment, limit employees’ political speech, and make other changes in line with the administration’s policies — including “transforming or abolishing institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.”

In exchange, the schools would gain “priority” federal funding – a potentially potent carrot at a time when the Trump administration is more often slashing schools’ funding in an effort to retaliate against them and force changes.

One school, the public University of Texas system, said it was honored to be considered without yet accepting. Kornbluth’s rejection makes MIT the first of the schools to reject the deal.

“In our view, America’s leadership in science and innovation depends on independent thinking and open competition for excellence,” she wrote in a letter to U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon Friday. “Therefore, with respect, we cannot support the proposed approach to addressing the issues facing higher education.”

The rejection could make Kornbluth a target of conservative ire nearly two years after she dodged criticism in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. After she and two other university leaders appeared before Congress in December 2023 to answer questions about their schools’ handling of campus antisemitism, the other two were widely maligned for their responses and soon resigned.

But Kornbluth, who had built strong ties with Jewish leaders at MIT and her previous university, Duke, retained the support of her community, despite concerns about responses to pro-Palestinian student protesters.

Now, Kornbluth could reignite right-wing anger — while shoring up support among those on her campus who might see her as resisting an inappropriate intrusion into the university’s governance.

In the letter, Kornbluth added that the “compact” included principles that would “restrict freedom of expression and our independence as an institution.”

While MIT has gone largely unscathed by the Trump administration’s campaign against antisemitism on college campuses, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law filed a lawsuit against the school alleging that it had “allowed an anti-Semitic climate to persist.”

The other seven colleges offered the deal were the University of Arizona, Brown University, Dartmouth College, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia. Other than the University of Texas, the other schools have not yet commented. It was not clear how the White House selected them.