Schools Find Their Spines

Plus: Zohran Mamdani's photo ops, hearings on Caribbean boat strikes, how the pandemic changed the world, and more...

An indecent proposal: Seven of the nine universities approached by the White House have said no to its offer of throwing more federal money their way in exchange for signing onto a compact that stipulates their commitments to academic freedom.

The University of Arizona, Brown University, Dartmouth College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, and the University of Virginia all said no. Vanderbilt University hasn't really telegraphed much (though the chancellor expressed hesitation), and only the University of Texas has indicated it might accept the terms.

The compact asks universities to no longer use race or sex in hiring or admissions (thus bringing them into compliance with existing federal law) and to shut down "institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle and even spark violence against conservative ideas," if they exist on campus. (Many universities have taken issue with this framing, suggesting it's singling out a specific set of viewpoints for protection.) In addition, "universities would not be allowed more than a 15 percent foreign student population," per The Hill, and "no more than 5 percent of foreign students could be from the same country." Also, "schools with an endowment of $2 billion could not charge undergraduate tuition to hard sciences majors" and tuition rates would be frozen for five years. Standardized tests would be required for admissions. Trans policies—like who is allowed to play on which sports teams—would be dictated from on high.

Some schools, like MIT, communicated to the Department of Education that they would not be signing onto the compact because it includes "principles with which we disagree, including those that would restrict freedom of expression and our independence as an institution" and because one of their "core belief[s] [is] that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone." But MIT already makes plenty of commitments that are in line with what the Trump administration expects from universities: Enrollment of international students is already capped at 10 percent, and a document outlining the school's academic freedom commitments was adopted by the faculty toward the end of 2022, in response to the current wave of "wokeness" and suppression of free expression at elite colleges.

Colleges so far seem hesitant to embrace the Trump administration's proposal, fearing it would invite greater control over their decisions by the executive branch and prevent them from pursuing the policies they believe best serve their institutions. If that results in colleges—both private and public—accepting fewer federal funds, that's arguably a good thing for taxpayers, even if you disagree with the means by which it was achieved.

Zelensky's meeting: On Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy faced tough talk from President Donald Trump during a White House meeting in which Trump "tossed aside maps of the front line and urged Kyiv to concede its entire Donbas region to Russia to clinch a deal, according to people familiar with the exchange" who spoke with The Washington Post. 

Trump's about-face is striking. "Last month, after meeting Zelensky in New York, Trump claimed Ukraine might be able to regain all its territory lost to Russia," notes CNN. "But now Trump is preparing for another high-stakes meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, this time in Budapest. It was after a call with the Russian leader on the eve of the Zelensky meeting that Trump again insisted Kyiv must give up swaths of land for the conflict to end."

"A Ukrainian source separately called the White House meeting 'tense,' but said there was 'no shouting,' downplaying reports of a volatile encounter between the two leaders," added CNN. "Overall, the source called the meeting constructive, since Trump ultimately declared that a ceasefire be along the current frontline. Zelensky later endorsed the idea in remarks to reporters."

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Scenes from New York: Zohran Mamdani's decision to pose with this man is actually insane.

I've been reliably informed that Democrats are opposed to any kind of political violence, so I look forward to them universally condemning Zohran Mamdani for campaigning with an unindicted co-conspirator in a terrorist plot that killed 6 New Yorkers. pic.twitter.com/opk2er6BnB

— JD Vance (@JDVance) October 18, 2025

"Lefty NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani gleefully campaigned this week with a notorious, gay-hating Brooklyn imam who is an unindicted co-conspirator in 1993 World Trade Center bombing and who has been linked to other terrorist activity in the United States—including urging 'jihad' on the Big Apple," reports The New York Post. "The Democratic frontrunner to become the city's next mayor was seen laughing and grinning while standing arm-in-arm with Siraj Wahhaj at the imam's Bedford-Stuyvesant mosque in a photo the socialist posted to X a day after the first mayoral debate. Councilman Yusef Salaam (D-Manhattan), a member of the Central Park 5 who was elected in November 2023, was also in the photo."

More about Wahhaj here and here. A relevant chunk from The New York Times (covering the…extremely bizarre cult-like behavior of Wahhaj's son): "The elder Mr. Wahhaj has for decades been the imam of Masjid at-Taqwa, which several people connected to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center either attended or visited around the time of the attack. During the investigation of the bombing, the elder Mr. Wahhaj was named on a list of several dozen potential conspirators in the plot, though he was never charged in the case and the list was later criticized for being overly broad, some former terrorism prosecutors said."

Your mileage may vary, but I don't love Mamdani's decision to pose with this man (nor do plenty of other New Yorkers).

Oh look, the "America deserved 9/11" guy has opinions about the discourse… https://t.co/IMoVGwUmeV

— Rafael A. Mangual (@Rafa_Mangual) October 21, 2025

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QUICK HITS

• Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee are calling for hearings into the Trump administration's decisions to strike down boats in the Caribbean, following news reports of fishermen being killed.
• "The US is balking at a European Union-led plan for Group of Seven nations to expand the use of frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine, according to people familiar with the discussions," reports Bloomberg. "US officials informed their European counterparts that they won't, for now, be joining the initiative during conversations on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund meeting in Washington last week, the people said, asking not to be named as the talks were private. The US cited risks to market stability as the reason for its reluctance, one of the people said. Another said the US simply was non-committal at this stage."
• "The fragile cease-fire in Gaza that came into force last week rests on some key assumptions: that Hamas militants give up their weapons and that an international troop presence keep the peace as Israel withdraws its military from the enclave," reports The New York Times. "But the countries that might make up that force are skittish about committing soldiers who could potentially come into direct conflict with Hamas while it is still an armed group, diplomats and other people familiar with the deliberations say."
• How the pandemic changed the world for the worse, a collection of observations by Patrick Collison: massive influxes of immigrants across the West; total shift in college student behavior, including students being far less likely to do reading assignments; British economic statistics on trade, population, employment no longer as reliable; nightlife depressed in the world's major cities; Western travel to China never recovered. What else?
• More wild post-pandemic stats:

Education stagnation: Only 3 states have fully bounced back in both math and reading since the pandemic: Iowa, Mississippi, and Tennessee.

Just 6 of 23 states beat 2019 math levels, and only 4 of 20 exceeded 2019 ELA levels.

The recovery gap remains wide.
Grateful for this… pic.twitter.com/SmFS3J54df

— John Bailey (@John_Bailey) October 20, 2025

• I can't stop loving Curtis Sliwa:

Have you ever purchased anything from a cannabis shop?

MAMDANI: *giggles* I have

CUOMO: No.

SLIWA: pic.twitter.com/lzzJhfxr7p

— ???????????????????????????? (@AnthonyHotBread) October 17, 2025