The Trump administration’s “compact” for universities represents a profound threat to the principle of peer review—the cornerstone of modern academia and scientific research. By proposing to award federal funds based on compliance with a political checklist, the plan sidelines the system of expert evaluation that has been used for generations to ensure quality and merit.
Peer review is the process by which work is evaluated by other experts in the same field. It is used to vet scholarly articles for publication, to award academic promotions, and, crucially, to allocate federal research grants. The goal is to ensure that decisions are based on the quality, rigor, and potential of the work, not on personal or political favoritism.
The “compact” throws this entire system into question. Under its terms, a university’s access to federal funds would depend not on the strength of its research proposals as judged by scientific peers, but on its performance on a set of political metrics. Did it “enhance the profile of conservatives”? Did it “scrap” the right departments? These are political questions, not academic or scientific ones.
This would effectively create a new, political layer of review that supersedes the expert judgment of scientists and scholars. An administration official, not a panel of Nobel laureates, could have the final say on whether a university’s research enterprise is worthy of funding. This would inject bias and ideology directly into the heart of the research process.
Critics warn that the end of a merit-based, peer-reviewed system would be a catastrophe for American innovation. It would lead to the funding of politically-connected but low-quality research, while groundbreaking but controversial work might be ignored. By attacking the principle of peer review, the compact threatens to dismantle the very mechanism that has made American universities the most productive and respected in the world.
