Trump’s university ‘compact’ is gone. That doesn’t mean the assault on education is over | Kenneth Roth

The administration's proposed agreement met a scathing response. But universities must remain vigilant

The Trump administration has quietly abandoned the poisonous deal it tried to foist on American universities. Under its so-called Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education, the administration offered select universities privileged access to federal grants if they agreed to conform with Donald Trump's ideology on how they should be run.

Universities widely pilloried the proposal, demonstrating the power of a collective defense. Higher education in the United States certainly needs reform, as many university leaders and the public would acknowledge, but not according to the dictates of Trump.

Kenneth Roth is a Guardian US columnist, a senior fellow at Yale University, and former executive director of Human Rights Watch. He is the author of Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments