We are less than a year into the second Donald Trump administration, which has set out to reshape much of the nation’s social and economic life, mostly by destroying or undermining our stable institutions. Among these, institutions of higher education have been the administration’s periodic targets, sometimes individually (Harvard, Columbia, the University of Virginia, the University of California, Los Angeles) and sometimes collectively (gutting research funding, warring against diversity efforts, targeting international and undocumented students, attempting to dismantle the Department of Education).
The question we must confront is how to fight back against assailants who are primarily interested in destruction and whose methods often involve singling out individual colleges or universities or members of their leadership, picking them off one at a time. Complicating the situation is the evisceration of the federal support structures that our institutions rely on and the shifting legal landscape amid challenges to various Trump administration actions, leaving matters like research support in limbo.
Institutions of higher education can take one of two paths: operate individually, trying not to draw attention and hoping they do not become targets, or act together, building new coalitions and alternative power structures that are necessary for our moment. An example of the latter solution has been the rise of calls for mutual defense compacts, mostly issued by faculty governance bodies, urging the leadership of their respective institutions to band together in the face of the present danger.
A Big Ten Alliance?
On March 28, 2025, Rutgers University’s senate passed a “Resolution to Establish a Mutual Defense Compact for the Universities of the Big Ten Academic Alliance in Defense of Academic Freedom, Institutional Integrity, and the Research Enterprise.” Responding directly to what the resolution identified as ongoing and potential threats, including the Trump administration’s “willingness to target individual institutions with legal, financial, and political incursion designed to undermine their public mission, silence dissenting voices, and/or exert improper control over academic inquiry,” the resolution called for what it termed a “Mutual Academic Defense Compact (MADC) among all members of the Big Ten Academic Alliance.”
Noting that “an infringement against one member university of the Big Ten shall be considered an infringement against all,” the Rutgers resolution went on to call on “the President of Rutgers University to formally propose and help establish a Mutual Academic Defense Compact (MADC) among all members of the Big Ten Academic Alliance.” By the end of April, the Rutgers MADC model had gotten national media attention, including in The New York Times, and by early May, similar resolutions had been passed by faculty senates at fourteen of the eighteen Big Ten universities.
These resolutions mirrored the Rutgers plan, calling on their institutions’ respective administrations to help form a new kind of enterprise, a compact under which “all participating institutions shall commit meaningful funding to a shared or distributed defense fund” that “shall be used to provide immediate and strategic support to any member institution under direct political or legal infringement.” Under the proposed terms, all “participating institutions shall make available, at the request of the institution under direct political infringement, the services of their legal counsel, governance experts, and public affairs offices to coordinate a unified and vigorous response, including but not limited to: Legal representation and countersuit actions; strategic public communication; amicus briefs and expert testimony; legislative advocacy and coalition-building; related topical research as needed.”
So, what sort of movement is this, and why are the details of the Rutgers resolution so important? The MADC plans revolve around a preexisting coalition, the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA), the academic side of the Big Ten athletic conference, made up of large research universities across the nation, including my own, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The BTAA is governed by the provosts of these institutions and describes itself as “the nation’s preeminent model for effective collaboration among research universities.” However, the MADC model calls for specific kinds of mutual support among institutions, ranging from behind-the-scenes coordination to public-facing legal and monetary assistance. These resolutions, including one passed by my institution’s senate on April 28, imagine reorienting how the eighteen institutions in the Big Ten relate to each other and to the alliance as a collective, based on concrete forms of support that could respond to the potentially existential threats of our moment.
The BTAA itself has moved to distance itself from this effort, issuing a statement (which no longer appears on its website) that read, “The Big Ten Academic Alliance did not contribute to and has not endorsed the Rutgers University Senate’s recent resolution, or similar resolutions from other universities, calling for a ‘mutual defense compact’ across Big Ten Academic Alliance universities. . . . Further, the resolutions do not represent the position of the Big Ten Academic Alliance, nor are they binding on the Big Ten Academic Alliance or any of its member institutions. The Big Ten Academic Alliance views resolutions passed by the faculty/university senates of its member institutions as campus matters and, consistent with Big Ten Academic Alliance policy, we do not comment on campus matters at our member institutions.”
In this response, the BTAA defends its own priority in the academic hierarchy while undercutting both its member institutions and their representative bodies. Faculty senate resolutions, as parliamentary instruments, have the power granted to them by the governance mechanisms at each institution. Many of the elements specified in the MADC resolutions fall within the faculty’s proper role in governance and would rely on faculty expertise in practice. Though faculty governance bodies do not have final say in these areas, their judgments should be overturned only rarely and for compelling reasons, as specified in AAUP’s Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities. Thus, resolutions such as these are directed at presidents, chancellors, and provosts, who could enact any necessary steps toward the proposed compact. But the BTAA has clearly distanced its own “position” from the judgments of the governance bodies of its member institutions. The BTAA is not the only obstacle here, of course, but our institutions remain vulnerable to individuated attack if we allow ourselves to remain divided, unable to act collectively.
Standing Together
A key issue raised in the discussion and passage of these sorts of resolutions is that of risk. As I have been cautioned many times along the way, each institution risks making itself a target amid ongoing legal and political fights over funding; diversity, equity, and inclusion; attacks on international and undocumented students; and so on. In late June, Jim Ryan, president of the University of Virginia, resigned after sustained political pressure, noting in a letter to his campus that “I cannot make a unilateral decision to fight the federal government in order to save my own job.” Individual actors in these fights indeed cannot, but groups can—our strength comes from our collective support.
Institutions of higher education are used to this sort of coalitional work in narrow circumstances. In April, the Association of American Universities, along with the American Council on Education, the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, and nine universities (including mine) sued the Department of Energy over changes to “indirect cost rates” related to federally supported research. In June, more than twenty universities signed on to an amicus brief in one of the ongoing Harvard cases. And, of course, university administrators coordinate through bodies like the Council of Presidents and Chancellors of the Big Ten. (For more on developments since the initial flurry of MADC resolutions, see “The Big Ten Rises Up Against Trump” by Virginia Heffernan in The New Republic.)
However, the MADC model attempts to meet our moment by aiming for something new: a compact that would lead to mutual support when a single institution comes under fire, built from the resources and expertise housed in each of our institutions. This is not without complications. Some states and systems restrict how funding can be used for external purposes; lawyers cannot operate in all jurisdictions; money, already in short supply at some universities, may have to be set aside. These are challenges but shouldn’t be seen as insurmountable obstacles—they are the necessary hurdles of true coalition building, which may be the only work that will allow our institutions to survive.
What began within the Big Ten universities has now expanded (according to a MADC tracker hosted by the University of Massachusetts, Amherst) to additional public and land-grant universities and across institutions in New York and Massachusetts. The model was endorsed by the National Council of Faculty Senates at the end of May, which called “on campus administrations to partner with faculty and staff to speak out in defense of the values of academic freedom, scholarship, and research; to help protect students, staff, and faculty from governmental reprisals; and to defend against attacks on institutions in the public sphere and, if need be, in any legal venues” and “on institutions of higher education to explore the formation and further development of mutual academic defense compacts.”
The calls for a mutual academic defense compact ask presidents, chancellors, and provosts to establish and boldly support such an alliance. This will in turn require sustained pressure and governance support at each institution. What began as a forceful resolution will need to become a standing governance body attending to these matters on behalf of the institution as the many internal and external players grapple with how to build something new. Failing to do so leaves each of us on our own, vulnerable to antagonists that love singling out victims. Standing together, protecting what we know to be the true values of higher education, is the only way to form a real defense and survive.
Shawn Gilmore is a teaching assistant professor in English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, vice chair of UIUC’s Senate Executive Committee, and a member of the AAUP’s Committee on College and University Governance. His email address is [email protected].