“If UT adopts the Trump compact, it is not an exaggeration to say that we will become a laughingstock among our peer universities,” Karma Chavez, the president of UT’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, said last week.
Chavez was referring to the deal the Trump administration floated in early October to UT and eight other universities. The deal promised research money if the schools would embrace the president’s political agenda, marginalizing LGBTQ+ students and punishing criticism of conservative ideas on campus, among other things.
Trump gave the universities until Oct. 20 to decide on the compact. Seven of them have now rejected it, saying they prefer to safeguard their academic freedom and compete for research money on the basis of merit alone. The eighth, Vanderbilt, didn’t reject the deal but stressed the same values.
This left UT-Austin as the only school which hasn’t publicly responded. The silence comes despite an early expression of enthusiasm from UT System Board of Regents Chairman Kevin Eltife, who said UT was “honored” to receive the offer when it was first tendered. On Friday, the Chronicle sent two queries to UT. We asked if its leaders have already privately agreed to the deal but not announced it. We also asked if they have lost their enthusiasm for the deal.
The university has not responded. That’s something Karma Chavez and her colleagues have experienced a lot, she told us. “The AAUP at UT-Austin executive committee sent a letter to President [Jim] Davis and Chairman Eltife in mid-October, offering several arguments against the compact and urging them to reject it,” Chavez said. “They never responded. A week later, we sent them the results of our AAUP chapter resolution in which 95% of voting members also rejected the compact. They never responded to that either.”
UT’s leaders had the perfect opportunity to take a stand last week, as Ken Paxton’s former lieutenant in the Texas attorney general’s office, Jim Davis, was inaugurated as the university’s 31st president. The ceremony inside Hogg Auditorium was largely ornamental, like Davis’ colored robe and the ceremonial mace he received on stage. Eltife introduced the new president but kept his lips tight about the compact. Davis avoided the subject, too, instead asking in Fox News fashion whether scientific inquiry at the university had become “indoctrination.”
“The vast majority of students have heard – and they’re angry about it.”
Parker Oehler of Students for a Democratic Society
As Davis spoke, about 100 students demonstrated outside the auditorium, chanting, “Hey hey, ho ho, the compact has got to go,” and “No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA.” Two days earlier, 200 students, including some from Students for a Democratic Society, marched down 21st Street to oppose the compact. A week before that, hundreds more rallied in front of the UT Tower, Parker Oehler of SDS told the Chronicle.
“We had, I think, at least 400 people present for that,” Oehler said. “We’re going to continue with protests to show the city, the state, the government, and the world that we disagree with our administration’s actions. Admin does not like people to know that the students disagree with them.”
Oehler, a history undergrad, said SDS was reinvigorated on campus in the early 2000s, but, beginning this semester, its meetings have doubled in size, drawing 25 to 40 people each week. He said UT students are quite aware of the Republican takeover of UT – of the firing of respected administrators and deans, the abolishment of DEI offices, the plans to eliminate courses from the core curriculum, and, of course, the compact.
“Almost every single student knows about it, not just those who are politically active,” Oehler said. “Whenever I go to local events and do outreach, I meet UT students, and I say, ‘Hey, have you heard about the compact that Trump offered? Have you heard about what’s happening to the College of Liberal Arts, the attacks on our free speech, the Senate bills that restrict our freedom of speech?’ The vast majority of students have heard – and they’re angry about it.”
In mentioning “what’s happening to the College of Liberal Arts,” Oehler referred to a committee that professors have told us was created this semester to recommend whether to merge some of the college’s highly respected studies programs into one department. The programs being looked at include African and African Diaspora Studies; Mexican American and Latina/o Studies; and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, professors say. These areas of study have come under sustained attack from Republicans, with Texas leaders working to diminish their presence on campus.
On Monday, the chair of the Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies, Mary Neuburger, sent a plea to COLA’s dean, David Sosa, asking him to reconsider the “reorganization plan currently under discussion” and not merge the department into another. “[S]uch a merger would put UT in the national spotlight as an institution contracting, weak, and moving toward second-tier status,” Neuburger wrote in a letter signed by six other department leaders.
Some students, like Ava Hosseini and Kira Small, feel that UT is already racing to second-tier status. So they’re organizing. The two humanities seniors spoke in support of academic freedom at protests last semester, meeting Alice Embree, a civil rights activist who helped found Austin’s iconic underground newspaper, The Rag, in 1966. Hosseini and Small relaunched The Rag with Embree’s guidance this semester. They’ve produced two issues already and have another on the way. Both are deeply embarrassed by UT’s leaders.
“It’s really quite humiliating to be somebody who turned down other very good schools because I was like, ‘UT’s the place to be!’” Hosseini said, laughing.
Small agreed. “It’s nothing short of embarrassing. All this, and we’re not even good at football this year.”
This article appears in October 31 • 2025.
