USC rejects Trump education compact aimed at shifting the university to the right

Los Angeles Times ^ | Oct. 16, 2025 Updated 2:11 PM PT | Daniel Miller

[E. Pluribus Unum]

• USC interim President Beong-Soo Kim rejected the Trump administration’s education compact, which would offer priority funding to universities following the president’s conservative vision.

• The USC Academic Senate strongly opposed the compact, with faculty calling it “probably unconstitutional” and “antithetical to principles of academic freedom.”

The University of Southern California on Thursday said that it had rejected the controversial education compact the Trump administration offered it and eight other schools.

USC interim President Beong-Soo Kim said in a statement that he had sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Education turning down the Trump offer, which would give priority research funding access to universities that agree to follow the president’s mostly conservative vision of higher education.

“I appreciate the various points of view shared with me by many members of our community. Although USC has declined to join the proposed Compact, we look forward to contributing our perspectives, insights, and Trojan values to an important national conversation about the future of higher education,” Kim said in a statement.

His letter, which USC provided to The Times, was addressed to Education Secretary Linda McMahon and said that the compact “raises a number of issues worthy of further discussion within both higher education and our nation.”

But, Kim wrote, the university had concerns about the president’s offer.

“We are concerned that even though the Compact would be voluntary, tying research benefits to it would, over time, undermine the same values of free inquiry and academic excellence that the Compact seeks to promote,” Kim wrote. “Other countries whose governments lack America’s commitment to freedom and democracy have shown how academic excellence can suffer when shifting external priorities tilt the research playing field away from free, meritocratic competition.”

Still, Kim’s letter said that the university “fully agrees” with a portion of the compact that says...

[Zathras]

“Kim first joined USC as its senior vice president and general counsel. Prior to that, he held senior roles at Kaiser Permanente, was a partner at an international law firm, and served in the U.S. Department of Justice, where he led the major frauds section in Los Angeles.”
Family came from Korea.

[arthurus]

Cut off all federal education money. Schools will become business in the market and will change drastically.

[goodnesswins]

Yes...as the White House spokeswoman said...”...the notion that universities should benefit from taxpayer money without responsibilities in return is terribly misguided.”

[Petrosius]

“Academic freedom,” right, when liberals control everything.

[Fungi]

Patrick Soon-Shiong is the leftist goon that owns the LA Slime. He became a billionaire inventing drugs, now he is inventing new ways to destroy the Slime. Pay no attention to this clown, nor to his paper, a paper where the front page is the opinion page and there is no news without a left wing slant. The paper is a joke, just like the owner. So good to see failure in progress, just a matter of time.

[budj]

Dear usc, To quote your old governator, "phuoc your freedoms."

[Fiji Hill]

USC remained a bastion of conservatism during the era of student uprisings in the middle of the last century, but it began moving left after James Zumberge became president in 1980.

It is now fully embracing wokeness. The Von KleinSmid Center, named for Rufus von KleinSmid, the president who turned the school into a world-class university, was renamed, and his statue removed, because it was discovered that he once wrote a paper favoring eugenics. The Song Girls who entertain Trojan fans at football games have been renamed the Song Leaders, even though they don’t lead songs, they just dance. Traveler, the horse that gallops around the Coliseum when the Trojans score a touchdown, has come under attack because he shares the name of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s horse, and he is also white. And it has been noted that the model for Tommy Trojan, the iconic statue of a Trojan warrior in the center of the campus, was a white student.

[Mastador1]

Shifting to the right, that means USC rejected shifting towards the center.