United University Professions, the nation’s largest higher education union, is calling on the State University of New York to publicly reject the Trump administration’s chilling and controlling higher education compact.

More than 400 delegates to UUP’s 2025 Fall Delegate Assembly in Albany overwhelmingly approved an Oct. 25 resolution urging SUNY Chancellor John King Jr. to refuse the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” and join colleges and universities that have already come out against it.

The compact offers higher education institutions preferential consideration for grant funding in exchange for major concessions that would erode academic freedom and institutional integrity.

“Donald Trump’s compact is his overt attempt to control colleges and universities and quash academic freedom by muzzling professors and staff that feel compelled to speak out against the actions of his administration,” said UUP President Frederick E. Kowal. “Accepting such a deal would be like selling the very soul of higher education, a transaction no institution or system should ever make.

“UUP looks forward to collaborating with the chancellor, the SUNY Board of Trustees and SUNY’s Faculty Senate to address this threat, yet another part of Project 2025 that’s come to fruition,” he continued. “Every higher education system and institution must stand together and resist this blatant attempt to overhaul and restrain higher education.”

At least 11 colleges and universities — including Syracuse University, the University of Southern California, Dartmouth and Brown — have publicly refused to sign the compact. The compact would bar colleges and universities from considering race, gender and financial status as factors during admission and hiring; cap enrollment of international students; and shutter departments that “punish, belittle” or spark violence against conservative ideals,” among other restraints.

In return, universities that sign the compact could get access to some benefits such as preferential treatment for grant funding.

The administration offered the compact to nine universities on Oct. 1. It has since opened the compact invitation to every college and university in the country.

AFT President Randi Weingarten and Todd Wolfson, president of the American Association of University Professors, also urged colleges and universities to publicly rebuff the contract.

“At a time when higher education is under relentless political attack, the universities that refused to sign onto (President Donald) Trump’s Faustian bargain showed real courage and integrity,” Weingarten said in an Oct. 23 news story posted on AFT.com. “They chose to stand with students, educators, and the principles of academic freedom, institutional integrity, and the very soul of higher education instead of bowing to partisan pressure.”

UUP is the nation’s largest higher education union, with more than 42,000 academic and professional faculty and retirees. UUP members work at 29 New York state-operated campuses, including SUNY’s public teaching hospitals and health science centers in Brooklyn, Long Island and Syracuse. It is an affiliate of NYSUT, the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association, and the

AFL-CIO.