Brown University on Wednesday rejected a White House proposal to steer public money toward schools that aligned with President Trump’s priorities, defying the federal government it had negotiated with over the summer.
Brown was the second university to rebuff the government’s proposal of so-called compact, after M.I.T. did so last week. But Brown’s decision was likely to carry extraordinary weight in higher education because it had previously reached a settlement with the Trump administration to restore hundreds of millions of dollars in federal research funding.
“I am concerned that the compact by its nature and by various provisions would restrict academic freedom and undermine the autonomy of Brown’s governance, critically compromising our ability to fulfill our mission,” the university’s president, Christina H. Paxson, told Trump administration officials in a letter on Wednesday.
The proposal, for which the government asked Brown and eight other universities to submit feedback by Monday, calls for limits on international students, potentially “abolishing institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle and even spark violence against conservative ideas,” and policies enshrining “that academic freedom is not absolute,” among other conditions.
The document, partially the brainchild of the billionaire financier Marc Rowan, says that schools are “free to develop models and values” other than the ones the Trump administration proposed if they choose to “forego federal benefits.” And the government had dangled the possibility of “multiple positive benefits” for schools that agreed, including “substantial and meaningful federal grants.”
Over the weekend, Mr. Trump had signaled that the compact would be open to a far broader pool of schools than the nine his government sought feedback from this month. Mr. Trump wrote on social media that “much of Higher Education has lost its way, and is now corrupting our Youth and Society with WOKE, SOCIALIST, and ANTI-AMERICAN Ideology,” and that “Institutions that want to quickly return to the pursuit of Truth and Achievement” were “invited to enter into a forward looking Agreement with the Federal Government to help bring about the Golden Age of Academic Excellence in Higher Education.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Brown’s decision.
The debate about the compact has been fraught throughout higher education, but the matter has been especially sensitive at Brown. In July, the university reached an agreement with the administration that included a $50 million pledge for work force programs and an array of policy changes.
In return, the Trump administration restored federal research funding, closed a handful of investigations and, crucially to Brown officials, agreed that the settlement would not give the government “authority to dictate Brown’s curriculum or the content of academic speech.”
In her letter to the government on Wednesday, Dr. Paxson noted the July agreement’s terms and suggested that the Trump administration’s proposed compact did not offer the same intellectual protections Brown had secured over the summer.
“We remain committed to the July agreement and its preservation of Brown’s core values in ways that the compact — in any form — fundamentally would not,” she wrote.
In some respects, Dr. Paxson’s letter echoed one that Sally Kornbluth, M.I.T.’s president, sent last week. In her letter, Dr. Kornbluth asserted that the proposed compact was “inconsistent with our core belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone” and threatened to “restrict freedom of expression and our independence as an institution.”
So far, only the University of Texas system has publicly indicated support for the administration’s proposal. Dartmouth College, the University of Arizona, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University have said little about their views.
Until Wednesday afternoon, Brown and Dr. Paxson had been largely silent, stirring fears in Providence, R.I., where the school’s campus is, that the university might agree to the proposal.
Students, faculty members and others in Brown’s orbit had protested, circulated petitions, bombarded administrators with letters and even planned an advisory campus referendum about how the university should respond.
“We need to decide, as a community, how or whether to respond to the invitation to provide comments,” Dr. Paxson said in an open letter last week, referring to the government’s request for feedback on the compact. She added, “Brown’s course of action should and will be informed by the perspectives of our community.”
But the compact had not attracted vocal champions on campus. Numerous students and faculty members across academic disciplines said they had not heard about people pushing for the university to adopt the proposal.
Then, with virtually no warning on Wednesday, Dr. Paxson dispelled some of the uncertainty.
“This is a major win, but the attack on higher education and Brown is not over,” Brown Rise Up, a student group that opposed the compact, said on Instagram soon after Dr. Paxson’s announcement. It pleaded for continued support “to fight back against Trump’s encroachment onto our schools.”
But it sounded a triumphant note.
“BROWN ROSE UP.”
Alan Blinder is a national correspondent for The Times, covering education.
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