How Trump Made Penn Quake in Its Boots

“Even the Middle East?” Troutt Powell asked him.

“Yes,” Trodden responded, before carefully adding, “It depends how you talk about it.”

Troutt Powell said that afterward Trodden came up to her, and she said, “Mark, that’s crazy!”

Via email, I asked Dean Trodden to explain what he meant by “it depends how you talk about it.” He did not address the point directly, and the Penn School of Arts and Sciences’ communications office offered the following statement on his behalf: “Academic freedom is fundamental to the School of Arts & Sciences’ work. Faculty must be able to teach, research, and discuss difficult and contested subjects, including topics that are politically or socially charged. We have confidence in our faculty to approach difficult questions with intellectual rigor, without bias, and with care for students. That is the spirit in which I have spoken with faculty about academic freedom and classroom discussion.”

While other universities are having similar challenges, what sets Penn apart is Marc Rowan’s relationship with Trump, who is also a graduate of Penn’s Wharton School. According to The New York Times, Rowan was the chief architect of the White House’s Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education. The compact was sent to nine of the nation’s top universities—Penn included—last fall; benefits including federal research funds were promised to those institutions that signed on to its conservative priorities. Among those priorities: limiting the number of foreign students and vetting those students for “noxious values such as antiSemitism”; “abolishing institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas”; and adopting a heavily restrictive policy on campus protests. Many of the ideas in the compact were taken directly from a document Rowan circulated to Penn’s board of trustees amid the campus furor over antisemitism in the fall of 2023.

While Penn ultimately rejected the compact, many of the professors I spoke to feel the university has already adopted many of its proposals. They point to the dismantling of DEI programming, the suppression of free speech and protest in the name of campus security, and, more broadly, the climate of fear that has many opting to avoid engaging in controversial or left-coded material.

“People now are extremely careful about what they say and what they have in class,” said Norton. “Not just junior professors and not just adjuncts. Everybody from top to bottom is scared.”

Grundy, the AAUP advocate, points to Penn’s Guidelines on Open Expression, which were temporarily revised to be more restrictive two years ago in response to the pro-Palestinian protest encampment—revisions that may soon be made more restrictive and permanent. “Neither Trump’s compact nor Penn’s Open Expression Guidelines protect open expression,” she said. “So much of it is couched in the need to be open to all views on campus. But, if you read between the lines, it’s a protection of conservative views, given how much pro-Palestinian views are suppressed. There’s a pattern here.”

Many of the professors I spoke to also allege that, through attrition, the Penn administration appears to be slowly but surely ridding its curriculum of courses that its donors and the Trump administration may find offensive. Norton, who taught Muslim political thought, told me she officially resigned this past fall under pressure from alumni and the board of trustees. She’s skeptical that the university will replace her expertise. Troutt Powell is also due to retire soon and doubts she will be replaced. “I’m very worried about what’s going to happen to the field of Middle East studies,” said Troutt Powell, adding that, with war in Iran, their expertise is needed now more than ever.

Lustick is also worried that Middle East studies in the United States are in danger. “But Penn is doing what so many schools are doing,” he said. “They’re compromising academic freedom and integrity in the hope of avoiding the wrath of this tyrant. In the hope of avoiding the wrath of Trump.”

“I know Penn is stuck between a rock and a hard place,” said Troutt Powell. “I get that, you know, they’re trying to deal with this crazy president. What in God’s name are you supposed to do? But one thing you do, I think, is you take a breath and remember that your responsibility is to your university community.”