CWA Statement on Trump’s ‘Compact 2.0’ for Higher Education

The Communications Workers of America (CWA) union released the following statement from CWA President Claude Cummings Jr. and CWA Public, Healthcare and Education Workers Vice President Margaret Cook:

On Monday, the Trump Administration and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon resumed its fanatical campaign to mold America’s higher education system into its extreme ideological vision. The so-called “National Call to Action to University Presidents and Governing Boards” is an attempt to bring back its extreme Higher Ed Compact, which campus workers and courageous higher ed leaders from across the country resisted and ultimately defeated last year.

Though some of the most severe elements of Compact 1.0 have been revised, this second version rehashes many of Trump’s grievances and mischaracterizations of our universities and the people who teach, work, and study there. Compact 2.0 may be disguised as concern for free expression, safety, affordability, and accessibility, but working people are not fooled by this fig leaf. This Administration has slashed funding for research, viciously repressed free expression and assembly, attacked student diversity, and repeatedly pursued punitive litigation against universities that resist its agenda.

What they want is to destroy higher education in America by attacking its faculty, staff, students, and institutions. 

No doubt there are real challenges with the higher education system in this country, from the rising price of tuition the Trump Administration will not help alleviate to the unregulated proliferation of AI the Trump Administration supports to the existential cuts to research and discovery the Trump Administration itself has made. Compact 2.0 does nothing to address these challenges.

Real change will come from the participation of the people who make our campuses work and run and the people who they serve; it will not come from threats nor from misleading claims and misinformation. Our union and our allies must mobilize to stop Compact 2.0 just as we helped stop Compact 1.0 and continue to push a program that defends our higher education system from these attacks, even as we seek to transform and expand it in support of our students, public education, discovery, and democracy.

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About CWA: The Communications Workers of America represents working people in telecommunications, customer service, media, airlines, health care, public service and education, manufacturing, tech, and other fields.

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