What began as a five-part series on the Trump administration’s proposed university “Compact” has taken an unexpected turn. In the days since I recorded the initial episodes, the story has evolved — fast. Newly published reporting in The New York Times has revealed the behind-the-scenes influence of billionaire financiers, the true origins of the Compact, and the extraordinary pressure placed on America’s top universities. Even more importantly, we now have the universities’ responses — and their almost unanimous rejection of the proposal.
This epilogue brings those new developments into focus.
In “The Compact for Obedience — New Developments, New Clarity,” I examine:
* How billionaires like Marc Rowan helped shape and promote a federal policy aimed at ideological control rather than academic excellence
* Why seven of the nine universities targeted by the administration rejected the Compact outright
* How the University of Arizona responded with one of the most principled, thoughtful, and constitutionally grounded letters in higher education — a model of academic integrity
* And why Marc Rowan’s continued insistence that “academic freedom is not absolute” reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the First Amendment and the Supreme Court’s distinction between protected academic speech and regulable commercial or harmful speech
This epilogue ties together the entire series — with the added clarity that comes only when the story deepens. If the original episodes revealed the Compact’s flaws, this chapter reveals its consequences and the national pushback it has ignited.
If you want to understand the full landscape of this unfolding battle — the power, the pressure, the constitutional stakes — this epilogue is essential.
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