Four more schools have rejected an offer the White House thought they couldn’t refuse, signaling the collapse of a so-called “compact” undermining academic freedom and LGBTQ+ rights that the presidential administration offered several universities earlier this month.

The discriminatory “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” extortion scheme, promising preferred access to federal funding in exchange for submitting to the administration’s demands over how to run the schools, was pitched to nine colleges and universities in a letter sent at the beginning of October.

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The 10-point plan demanded the schools’ submission to the president’s “gender ideology” obsession, effectively erasing trans identity in higher education, along with a cap on international undergraduate enrollment at 15% and banning the use of race or sex in hiring, among other diktats.

Over the last week, the University of Arizona, the University of Southern California, Dartmouth College, and the University of Virginia joined Brown University, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania in rejecting the administration’s academic shakedown.

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Vanderbilt University and the University of Texas have yet to announce their intentions following a Monday deadline imposed by the White House to sign on.

“A number of the proposed federal recommendations deserve thoughtful consideration as our national higher education system could benefit from reforms that have been much too slow to develop,” University of Arizona President Suresh Garimella said in a message to the campus community on Monday.

But “principles like academic freedom, merit-based research funding, and institutional independence are foundational and must be preserved,” she said.

“As a result, the university has not agreed to the terms outlined in the draft proposal.”

The school responded to the U.S. Department of Education instead with its existing Statement of Principles.

At the University of Southern California, a packed campus town hall two weeks ago universally denouncing the compact preceded a letter from USC interim President Beong-Soo Kim sent to Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon on Thursday, rejecting the White House “offer.”

“Without an environment where students and faculty can freely debate a broad range of ideas and viewpoints, we could not produce outstanding research, teach our students to think critically, or instill the civic values needed for our democracy to flourish,” Kim wrote.

“USC respectfully declines to participate,” he told McMahon.

Following a virtual meeting with the education secretary on Friday, Dartmouth and the University of Virginia announced they would decline the administration’s proposal.

Dartmouth President Sian Leah Beilock rejected the administration’s approach in a letter to students and faculty on Saturday, saying she doesn’t believe “a compact — with any administration — is the right approach to achieve academic excellence.”

UVA said it would decline “special treatment” when it comes to federal funding.

The schools’ rejection is a clear defeat for the president, who claimed colleges and universities would fall in line “FAST” with his offer to undermine academic freedom.

“Higher Education has lost its way, and is now corrupting our Youth and Society with WOKE, SOCIALIST, and ANTI-AMERICAN Ideology,” he posted to Truth Social after the compact letter was sent on October 1.

“My Administration is fixing this, and FAST, with our Great Reform Agenda in Higher Education.”

“History will not judge USC kindly if it agrees to this compact,” said Ed Saxon, Chair of the Peter Stark Producing Program at the USC School of Cinematic Arts at the school’s campus forum earlier this month.

“The government is clearly engaged in a war on education,” he warned. “Capitulation is the fastest route to ruin.”

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