The White House “Compact” and the arts
I’ll first thank people for all their kind wishes - I am on the mend, though I’ll be moving even more slowly than usual for the next few weeks.
In response to my request for topics, Alex wrote:
I would be really curious to hear your thoughts on the recent “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” that the Trump Dept. of Ed asked nine US universities to sign. There are numerous US “culture-war” issues embedded in the compact, and how we teach students has a broader impact on US cultural policy. I am interested (concerned) about the compact’s potential cultural/economic impact, why those universities in particular, where we might be headed, etc.
Good question. A lot has been written about the proposed Compact (I will skip the constant use of scare-quotes) with, at first a select set of major universities, and now apparently open to all, as the White House struggles to get momentum with any school signing on. The text of the compact is Here.
I will spare any in depth analysis except for this: it has much in common with what many Republican-led state governments have been doing for a few years now - ham-fisted attempts to take on contemporary right-wing grievances regarding universities, amplified in the Fox-News-Twitter-and-associated-media machine, without any serious examination, or even the idea that serious examination could possibly be worthwhile, of the very complex issues involved. It’s not that higher education in this country doesn’t have some serious issues that need addressing. My own list of what’s going wrong is far deeper and more extensive than contained in the Compact. But (1) I’ve taught in universities big and small for over forty years, and (2) I recognize there are not easy fixes that could be captured in two paragraphs and applied to widely varying institutions across the country. To take but one example, free expression and a marketplace of ideas are nice things, but setting out exactly how that will apply in and out of the classroom is not simple in the least - up to the day of my retirement I was still not sure where I would land on various “hard cases.” There’s a presumption that it’s simple, and this attitude has led my state government to do real damage to the functioning of my old university (more damage than the current White House administration has, so far, managed to cause).
I’ll note one other things about the Compact, and that is the underlying view of how it perceives federal government research funding. It uses the word “benefit”, in the sense of “universities benefit from receiving research funding (it seems unclear on whether they understand it is faculty and their labs that apply for funding), and so in return they need to give something back in terms of upholding certain policies we would like to see.” The idea that it is the public, society, through increasing our understanding of the world, that is the beneficiary, is missing. Maybe it is the utter disregard for scientific evidence held by members of the Cabinet that is a part of this. But the question of why we might as a country fund research into the development of nucleic acid and protein biosensors seems entirely missing.
In short: no university should sign this.
And now to the arts. The administration’s interventions into the Kennedy Center and the Smithsonian museums have received a lot of press, and these “anti-woke” interventions have a lot in common with the Compact. But you might have noticed, we don’t really hear much about the rest of the art world. Why not? Because the federal funds received are so small. The last time I looked (feel free to fact check me on this), the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra receives in the ballpark of $50k a year from the National Endowment for the Arts. I’m not sure that amounts to even a third of the annual salary of a principal player. It’s walking-around money, nothing more. And so if the NEA draws up a Compact for applicants for grants, arts organisations can take it or leave it. Indeed they can, and I’m led to understand have, been able to increase fund raising by multiples over what they might have lost in federal funds.
Big Research-1 universities have structured themselves with a dependence on federal research funds, not dreaming what might happen if one day there would be a President willing to threaten to take it all away (to be fair, I wouldn’t have dreamt it either). But in our arts admin classes, you will recall, Alex, we gave stern warnings regarding “resource dependence.” It holds up.
Thanks for the thoughtful response, Dr. Rushton! From your keyboard to every university president's ears, especially the unfortunate nine that received this memo. I am encouraged that several have rejected the compact and none (to my knowledge) have accepted it since I first asked the question. I'm also glad you brought up the case of IU. They are on my mind a lot these days, too, for the reasons you cited, and it speaks to the tacet threat to US higher education from broader Republican-led governments at the federal and state levels all across the country. This isn't the first and probably won't be the last Sopranos-style shakedown for US universities.
I especially appreciate you characterizing the compact as an oversimplification of complex issues in higher education. That rings true to me, especially in our modern political environment, where policies are mass-communicated via short "Xeets" or "Truths," and there is often populist backlash against nuanced expert opinion, whether is is on vaccines and public health or public discourse on university campuses.
R1 universities' dependence on federal research dollars certainly has made the last nine months chaotic. I suppose if there is any upside, it is job security for folks like me, who are in development and tasked with raising money from almost any kind of source *except* government. I am not sure where we go from here: private philanthropy--even from the mega foundations--is dwarfed in scope by federal research dollars, and shifting to a private, sponsored projects model from industry will certainly change *what* is being researched by US universities.
There is a Compact of sorts with the NEA if you are awarded funding. Unfortunately, unless one is very aware during the application process and can read between the lines of their carefully parsed language, you don't get to see it until they fund your project and send you a contract. They are pretty coy and somewhat encouraging in their public information here: https://www.arts.gov/grants/legal-requirements-and-assurance-of-compliance but the actual contract language is tougher and meant to scare, although no actual changes of law have been implemented. I had to consult with their Civil Rights Office before I applied to make sure the program in my application--one that was designed for low-income youth under 18--would be OK. I don't have a recent contract with them or I'd quote from it, and I'm sure language from NSPM-7 will be infused into the new contracts that are coming out with awards in the spring.