Thoughts on Secretary McMahon’s New Letter to Universities

By Jenna Silber Storey
August 3, 2026

This morning, Secretary McMahon issued a letter to university presidents and board chairs, asking them to explain how their institutions are addressing or will address seven key issues that concern many Americans.

I’ve played a part in some of the conversations leading up to this document, and particularly in bringing AAU leadership into dialogue with the administration, as was reported here. 

My reasons for engaging in this kind of work are laid out in a piece Benjamin Storey and I published last October. That piece was written in support of Danielle Allen’s article about the potential for progress inherent in the Administration’s original “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.” Although that “Compact” was a significantly flawed document, we hoped it could be the beginning of a negotiation between parties we believe ultimately need to work together.

I think today’s letter is a significant improvement, and hope that it will prove to be a small but important step toward our universities reestablishing the bipartisan relationships and support they need to put themselves on a more stable legal and political footing.

Although I don’t agree with everything stated in this new letter, in my view it significantly improves on the original “Compact” in four ways: 1) it takes a more measured and constructive approach; 2) it does not attempt to impose a single approach on the sector, but asks academic leaders to explain how their different institutions approach these issues in the ways that are appropriate to them; 3) by leaving initiative to the universities, it avoids proposing policies that are unworkable and perhaps unconstitutional; 4) it has already occasioned some constructive conversation between academic leaders and the administration, hopefully paving the way for more.

For parties as deeply divided as the Trump administration and America’s leading research universities to enter into conversation in this way is a heartening sign of the progress that remains possible in our politics. If other actors in our divided country could follow their example in realizing that working out differences over problems that seem intractable is what democratic politics requires of us, we would all be better off.

I hope that these conversations mark a turning point in the recent history of American higher education, toward an era of intellectual and institutional renewal and the recovery of the public trust our universities need to do their indispensable work well.