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Much has been written about the Aug. 3 letter from Secretary of Education Linda McMahon calling on college presidents and governing boards to publicly answer how they will commit to issues such as transparency in admission, free expression on campuses and intellectual pluralism in academic units, among others. Just a few years ago, it might have been inconceivable that the articulation of policies on such profound matters as curriculum, grading, free exchange of ideas and research integrity could be done without the active involvement of faculty. However, with the weakening or even abolishing of faculty governance at many universities either by legislation or board action, there is a real possibility that faculty might be left out completely, or involved only marginally. This would be a terrible mistake, with long-term implications for the institutions themselves and for the country as a whole.
This is not a simple matter of consultation, but a fundamental question of who has the expertise to define an institution’s academic commitments. A president and board may speak for a university, but they cannot unilaterally define the curriculum, research practices or faculty policies. Those responsibilities belong to the faculty through both established structures of shared governance and tradition. As advocated by Stand Together for Higher Ed, for whom I’m a senior adviser, presidents and boards should make no response to the McMahon letter without meaningful, substantive involvement of faculty governance from the beginning of the process.
We have already seen the danger. Vanderbilt’s Board of Trustees adopted a Declaration of First Principles addressing many of these same academic matters, reportedly without faculty consultation. By contrast, Washington University in St. Louis Chancellor Andrew Martin has committed to a faculty-led process for developing the university’s response to McMahon’s letter. The latter approach should be the norm, not the exception.
We also urge institutions to make the process visible. Presidents should state publicly which faculty governance bodies are participating, when they entered the process and whether those bodies ultimately concur with any representations made about academic policy. Where substantial disagreement remains, that disagreement should not be concealed behind a single institutional voice.
Given the failed history of the government’s “Compact on Excellence in Higher Education,” which was a bare-knuckled attack on institutional autonomy in an effort to impose government ideology, it is hard to take the new letter as a good-faith call for building public trust. As has been pointed out in the joint statement by PEN America and the Alliance on Higher Education, as well as the American Association of University Professors’ analysis, the secretary’s letter is the same compact disguised in more polite language.
More ominously, after Secretary McMahon sent the “Compact 2.0” letter on Aug. 3, the Heritage Foundation (source of Project 2025) one day later proposed “Model State Legislation to Codify the Federal Higher Education Compact.” More state government intrusion into university governance is lurking in the background.
Many of the values invoked in the letter—academic rigor, intellectual pluralism, free expression, research integrity—are core values universities fully embrace. The danger lies in allowing the federal or state government to define their meaning and prescribe how universities must implement them. “Intellectual pluralism,” for example, becomes something very different when government officials use it to influence whom universities hire or what perspectives academic departments must represent. “Academic rigor” becomes a threat to academic autonomy when political officials presume to dictate grading practices or curricular standards. The issue is not whether universities should pursue excellence, merit or open inquiry and be accountable. It is who gets to define those principles and determine how they are realized.
Universities are caught between the government’s bad-faith effort to intrude into academic matters, on the one hand, and the public’s declining confidence in higher education on the other. The latter is no doubt the result of a combination of factors: the rising burden of the student share of the cost of college, diminishing job prospects in a rapidly changing AI economy and the constant din of negative messaging about alleged leftist indoctrination.
The principled position might be to refuse the secretary’s call to action. However, this is likely to strike the public as tone-deaf. Along with other organizations, we at Stand Together for Higher Ed believe the answer should be a collective response to the public directly, countering the misconceptions and misinformation about those aspects of higher education that have been called into question. This cannot be done without significant involvement of faculty—who, after all, are the ones who carry out the academic functions of the university.
The questions raised by the secretary pertain to curriculum, faculty hiring, academic standards (including admission and grading) and research integrity. These are precisely the subjects that the 1966 Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities—formulated jointly by the AAUP, the American Council on Education and the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges—assigns as faculty’s primary responsibility.
We acknowledge that the governing board and the president decide whether and how the institution will respond to McMahon’s letter. But the 1966 Statement also says that presidents are responsible for ensuring that “faculty views, including dissenting views, are presented to” governing boards on matters of shared responsibility. A decision to make a public declaration about the university’s academic mission, under federal pressure, is not an ordinary administrative matter; shared governance requires faculty involvement before it is made. No institutional representation about curriculum, faculty status or academic standards should be published without first being shaped by faculty governance.
