Penn union organizers call Trump demands on higher education a ‘total betrayal of our values’

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​​The Trump administration asked the University of Pennsylvania and eight other universities to make sweeping changes in exchange for access to federal programs, such as research grants, student loans and student visas for international students.

Union organizers representing faculty and early career researchers at Penn, as well as local elected officials, urged the university not to capitulate to demands that they said jeopardize research independence and academic freedom.

The Trump administration said that schools have to:

• Not consider race, ethnicity, religion, nationality, gender identity or political views in admission decisions
• Freeze tuition rates for American students for the next five years
• Not make any statements about societal and political events unless they impact the school directly
• Define male and female based on “reproductive function and biological processes”
• Cap undergraduate international student admissions at 15%
• Screen for international students who “demonstrate hostility to the United States, its allies, or its values”
• Share all information about international students to the departments of Homeland Security and State when those agencies ask for it
• Assess the political beliefs of faculty, staff and students such that there is “a broad spectrum of ideological viewpoints present”
• Only give grades that “rigorously reflect the demonstrated mastery of a subject” and explain any “unusual upward trends” in grades with public statements

Jessa Lingel, an associate professor of communication at Penn and president of the school’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, a union for university faculty, said the White House demands violate academic freedom by dictating how universities should be run.

“This set of principles in this compact affects everything we do at Penn and would be a total betrayal of our values,” she said.

For instance, she said that she would not be able to teach her gender studies classes if she had to adhere to the White House’s definition of male and female, because it goes against the scientific literature.

She said there are many union members at Penn who receive federal grants for their labs who have told her that “they want their grants to be awarded based on the merit of their ideas, not the political football that’s happening behind the scenes.”

The union chapter has put out a petition from faculty, staff, alumni and students asking the university not to sign the agreement. Lingel said she has heard from faculty members who plan on retiring early, and alumni who may pull donations, if the university accepts this agreement.

“They want to continue to feel proud of this university so that’s really what’s at stake here,” she said. “What I am seeing again and again in conversations with alumni and faculty and staff is that … Penn’s administration accepting this compact would come at an incredible cost. It might mean that we get more grants here and there but it would come at a real cost in terms of a sense of pride, a sense of integrity.”

She added that her union chapter is working on a joint statement with faculty at the eight other schools that are included in the Trump administration’s list.

Leadership at The University of Pennsylvania did not respond to a request for comment.

President J. Larry Jameson said in a letter that the school will not ask for special consideration and its “long-standing partnership with the federal government in both education and research has yielded tremendous benefits for our nation.” He said the White House wants a response by Oct. 20, and that he will talk to people at Penn, including dean, the Faculty Senate and the board of trustees.

Notably missing from that list are students, graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and workers who help maintain Penn’s campus, said Bridget Begg, a molecular and computational biologist, a fourth-year postdoctoral researcher at Penn and a union organizer who helped unionize other postdoctoral researchers earlier this year.

She said that the Trump administration’s policies have already led to researchers losing jobs, international students afraid to speak their minds and international researchers leaving the U.S., so she hopes the school will draw the line at not signing this agreement.

“For the universities to not be at that red line yet when we are seeing this as the academic researchers on the ground is a little baffling,” she said.

She said that the university should not cede control of the school to the White House in exchange for research funding.

“The interest … and the meaningfulness is supposed to be determining the research. Otherwise, everyone would be in industry, where the money determines what the research is,” she said. “There’s a reason that universities are independent.”