CAA News Today
ACLS Releases Statement Regarding White House “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education”
posted Oct 07, 2025
The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) released a statement regarding the October 1 White House proposal to nine universities which delineated a list of demands in exchange for receiving preferential access to research funding.
CAA stands with ACLS in the call for the immediate rejection of the “Compact for American Excellence in Higher Education” by all institutions of higher education in order to preserve academic independence.
“Universities and colleges have one mission: to advance knowledge. Faculty carry out the mission by conducting research and teaching students. The knowledge they produce and circulate is independently assessed by professional peers. Interfering with that process by forcing knowledge to pass through a political filter is a tactic adopted by the Soviet Union and other authoritarian states. The White House is dressing up its compact as a reasonable corrective to what it views as problems in campus culture. Let no one be deceived. This proposal imposes government censorship on academia. It is anti-American, and it weakens our democracy by devaluing academic expertise.”
Read the full statement here.