Elite Schools Like MIT Are Hardly Free Markets for Ideas

The school’s president rejected the Trump administration’s “compact” to receive funding preferences in exchange for committing to basic goals.

Earlier this month, the White House announced a “compact” under which universities would receive funding preferences in exchange for committing to basic educational goals. The compact represents the Trump administration’s most concrete plan yet for ensuring academic excellence and reversing the process of ideological capture in the universities. It builds on many of the concepts I and others championed in the Manhattan Statement on Higher Education: freedom of speech, civil discourse, institutional neutrality, and equality under the law.

These are common-sense principles. They should be the opening ante in any negotiation between the White House and the elite universities. As the Manhattan Institute demonstrated in public polling, these ideas are also overwhelmingly popular with the American people.

Nonetheless, the reaction from the higher-education establishment has been mixed. Some universities are considering entering into the compact. But the first university to go on the record, MIT, has publicly rejected it. In a reply to education secretary Linda McMahon, MIT president Sally Kornbluth wrote that such a compact would jeopardize the university’s ability to participate in a “free marketplace of ideas.”

The argument is preposterous for four reasons. First, elite universities are, intellectually speaking, some of the least free institutions in America. Conservatives have spent decades documenting double standards and ideological capture in these institutions, including at MIT. Even anodyne speech, like the idea that men cannot become women, sets off investigations, punishments, and ostracism.

In a real marketplace of ideas, scientifically and naturally obvious statements—such as the fact that men cannot become women—should win in a landslide. Instead, elite universities enforce a system of complex fictions, of which transgenderism is merely one example.

Second, the ideological imbalance at universities, including MIT, undermines the “marketplace” description. In a marketplace, competing firms receive equal treatment. In theory, this means that the best ideas win the greatest share of customers.

That’s not how it works in higher education, where universities enforce a cartel-like ideological system in which only left-wing ideas are permitted, rewarded, and promoted. Conservatives get filtered out through ideological hiring programs, including DEI. Consequently, conservative ideas, held by a substantial share of the American public, are almost completely unrepresented on campus.

Third, in a free marketplace of ideas, competing firms—in this case, universities—would be free and independent institutions. But MIT and other elite universities receive billions in federal subsidies. They have willingly accepted enormous taxpayer largesse. That means that they relinquish their independence, instead entering into a state of dependency on the government.

For decades, university administrators believed that they could simultaneously harvest cash from taxpayers and maintain a left-wing ideological monoculture. The Trump administration has exposed the intellectual bankruptcy of this approach. The only truly free institutions are those that do not accept any public funds, like Hillsdale College. Such schools have greater freedom to operate as they see fit without reciprocal obligations to the public.

Fourth, we have seen the ultimate corruption of the free marketplace of ideas with the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk. Kirk’s organization, Turning Point USA, was founded on the premise that faculties and administrations of universities are overwhelmingly left-wing, meaning that students would need to be the ones to inject conservative ideas into academic life. Kirk himself traveled to universities to challenge the campus monoculture—including on the day of his murder. He believed in the principles of President Trump’s compact—free speech, civil discourse, institutional neutrality, and equal treatment under the law—and he made persuasive arguments, including the argument that men cannot become women.

This competition provoked revolt, not reasoned disagreement. Campus chapters of TPUSA were sometimes subject to administrative overreach and punitive action. The hostility came to a head last month, when, rather than allowing Kirk to voice his ideas on a college campus, his alleged assassin shot him through the neck. Many liberals, including many academics, celebrated it.

Given these facts, the “free marketplace of ideas” is not a productive metaphor for how higher education works. Claims that such a marketplace exists on campuses are a cynical manipulation designed to maintain the appearance of free speech amid a rigged system with a cartel-style organization.

The Trump administration should accept these realities and incrementally increase both the rewards for entering into the compact and the punishments for refusing. In an ideal system, American universities would operate on a consistent set of basic principles under which they allow a broad range of discourse. The major schools of thought would be represented across disciplines, especially in the humanities. The Trump compact is worth supporting because it would move us in that direction.

If MIT sticks with its rejection of the compact, it is implicitly rejecting public support. The Trump administration should commence the termination of all taxpayer funding to the university until it is willing to meet minimum academic standards. If MIT wants truly to participate in a “free marketplace of ideas,” the president should free it from the bondage of public subsidy.